"having farmers feed our population by farming on the outskirts of town"

Hah, good luck with that. Any farmers who would survive would be hard to convince to return to the present arrangement of indentured servitude, feeding those who are neither capable of feeding themselves, nor value it. No, anyone surviving such an event would most certainly find themselves becoming farmers for the foreseeable future afterward as food production becomes tied for #1 concern.

I understand that to city dwellers, this might at first seem like a step backward, but it's not. ...and if you are an urbanite, what chances do you really think you have living in a dense population center of surviving the initial infection wave?

No. Unless you save a whole lot of really skilled people, from scientists to physicists to skilled machinists and materials handling people, and keep those companies going, you can forget about going back to the moon for a few generations. The great leaps made post-war that took us into space came on the backs of millions of peoples lifetimes spent in the sciences, in many countries, dedicated to a huge number of specialties, combined with a lot of fortunate chance discoveries and events.

The cast of plebs in The Walking Dead will be lucky to survive long enough to reach the only truly safe location, and spend the remainder of their lives focusing on feeding themselves. There's no chance of starting a civilization with such a limited gene pool, and especially one with little to no knowledge of how the natural world they depend on actually works. They're fucked.

They're actually the Walking Dead, not the zombies.

Starting a community would be hard unless you had a good group of survivors to begin with. I would try to find a person or two that could farm get a few that could shoot, etc etc until I had a group of people that would die by themselves, but as a group they would be able to do anything, but that won't happen in the real world. The best bet is to just fit in a group and slowly take it over from the inside. Why do the hard work when you can take it from somebody else.

>>3132

This precisely. The reason we can build robots and advanced machinery and what not relies completely on the fact that a huge part of our population don't have to work in agriculture, freeing these manhours for doing just these things.

When our food supply is threatened and 80% of our agricultural knowledge is wiped out then you can bet that only a very few will be free to do anything but work related to securing food/water and shelter.

You know how one farmer can feed hundreds of people, not going to happen when the infrastructure that supports this goes out, then it's back to all those hundreds of people going back into the field and doing their own work if they want food on the table.

For example, no improved seeds and fertilizers will mean lower agricultural yields. Not a big problem if most of our population is gone but means more work to feed the people we do have.

Having to actually guard our livestock from looters/zombies mean devoting a lot of manpower to just watching animals do their thing.

Let's not forget oil, what oil has done to agriculture and thus our society is almost equivalent to magic. No longer did hundreds of people have to go out into the field and plow, remove rocks, seed and eventually harvest by hand. Instead all that work took one man and a specialized agricultural machine running on diesel.

I can imagine coal towns doing okay though as that could in part replace oil but then the people working the fields have just been moved to working the mines, freeing up a few more people to do something else.


What i'm talking about is our civilization moving back to early 19th century in development.

The drawback: very few of us have useful skills relating to this era of development and old power structures have been ruined with trade and cooperation being limited as there is probably no central authority. This in addition to friggin' zombies being everywhere, though possibly quite rare they are still a major health hazard.

The advantage: there are books and those who do know useful stuff are probably more knowledgeable than their equivalents from that time, meaning less trial and error. Also we have plenty of modern technology and junk just waiting to be readapted.


//Summary AKA Speculation, 30years after Z-day:

Most people are farmers or laborers, security will be a constant concern thus lowering general productivity.

Technological readvancement will be quick due to the efforts of a dedicated few but modern technology will be extremely rare due to limited trade enabling mass production of say, circuitry, most of "high" technology will in fact be scavenged and repurposed.

50% of our electricity is from remnant "green" power plants like the hoover dam (these communities will have essentially limitless energy as long as they can keep it maintained, this would mean having extensive trade and regional influence, possibly a large military to keep the plants running making them natural trade and industrial centers as well as political capitals) and the rest is from boilerplants running on coal and various wood products, with a few succesful farming communities possibly running old diesel generators and vehicles on ethanol.

There will be work into getting the oil fields running again but this will proceed slowly due to political squabbling between major powers not wanting one side to get exclusive access to oil and thus have a HUGE advantage. This could be a quite plausible cause of war as the one holding all the oil will eventually dominate those who do not.

Main causes of death will be "preventable" by todays standards but no or limited supply of antibiotics means people could potentially die from infection due to a small cut on their hand.

There are many currencies ranging from precious metals to working batteries of all sizes and ammunition.

//End of somewhat wild yet slightly plausible speculation.

Yes. That would be the whole idea. My theory is that all it would take is another generation to cleanse the world. Think about it. Everyone would be depressed and terrified because the apocalypse would all be so new. They had a comfortable life before it all and now it's gone. Once you had a baby and raised it, it would be able to live (semi) normally. All it's ever known is zombies. People can adapt to horrible conditions. Look at the middle east, Brazil, Mexico. People live normal lives despite war, poverty and suffering all around them. It's when people are thrown into difficult situations all of a sudden that they start to lose hope.

I think people would crave a sense of belonging and order. So I believe it to be a safe assumption something like this would happen. I do agree with finding a group and trying to take it from the inside however. It is safer to join a larger group than trying to build a smaller one. If you're a man however, there will likely be problems finding a group to accept you without there being alpha disputes.

I always assumed that there would be some country/urban city that got spared for whatever reason, and they would just cautiously expand outwards re-covering the earth.

File 134371545038.jpg - (3.64MB , 3888x2592 , Unfinished_Earthship_2.jpg )

What I imagine it would be like say 30 years after zday depends on how well we can contain it. If the zombies are badasses and infection rates are high, we may be looking at a total collapse of society as we know it and maybe even the eventual extinction of the human race. This would be especially true if the average military response were sluggish and poorly dispatched, which I doubt.

Generally I like to imagine there would just be hell zones i.e. Areas of containment considered quarantined and abandoned, obviously restricted to the general public. It could be anything from strategically expendable communities to huge swaths of landscape. Probably a fun place to scavenge and go on adventures, if you're life means nothing to you. The rest of society would just attempt to recover and move on.

On the note about farming though, I agree it would become integral to almost every established household. There's these houses they make out of landscaping and recycled refuse that have greenhouses built into the front porch. They're called Earthships. Check them out on Youtube or something.

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basic idea behind an Earthship would need defensive improvements obviousl

Well there are some things that would be a bit strange after zombies. First living would/should be communal, because though that causes faster spread of disease, it is far more defensible. Which is more important when a singe zombie can fuck you all over by sneaking into someone's room at night. Fear tends to drive people together, or apart, people driven away from others will not likely even try to live in towns having no real effect on their layouts. Also if your daytime is full of zombies trying to eat you, your dreams will likely be similar. Sleeping in a group, or at least near other people would help with nightmares and make it easier to calm down after one.

For that reason also people should tend to pick a single building and level everything near it, living together in a single structure that people/zombies can't sneak up to. Now while that might make the location rather conspicuous to people, if you have enough people, not being conspicuous would be nearly impossible, particularly if you are farming. However if there are no individual buildings that can hold all of your people a group of connected/nearby buildings may work well, such as a school campus, though individual apartment buildings may be better they might not hold the required functionality. Another option would be to build up around the base of the main building, or connect it to another building through new construction. Lastly one might split the group and take multiple buildings and pack people in them as needed. Basically though you would be seeking a very high population density, because that way the number of guards vs other workers allows greater flexibility.

As for fortifying your structures, a basic wall may be enough against zombies, even a chain-link fence could be enough if it is far enough away from the structure. Against humans you are kind of screwed when it comes to fortification, not much that you could build would be able to handle a truck that has a brick on the gas pedal sent vaguely in its direction, or any of the other fairly cheap options that would be available to attackers. So your best defense may be open space for your guards to pick off attackers before they get close, possibly with a very rough rubble field past that to block vehicular assaults.

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Underground
fucking
farming.

It's a real thing.

Now all I need is a fuck-tonne of money and all my woes are solved forever. Since it will be produce generating I take out a loan.

Please poke holes in my plan.
Seems to easy to be true.

well a 10 megawatt solar power station built on stilts over the top of a 200 square metre one foot deep trout pond (trout doesn't need deeps you could breed a few thousand in there, easy to catch to)surrounding your pond / power stations painted in fluorescent pink a 2 metre high concrete wall with duel AA12 shotgun turrets belt feed with explosive frag round (naturally, thermal and night vision as well as a high res digital camera for tracking). Underground first level is a full 200 square metre hydroponics room growing crops on rotation while using the phosphate and poo enriched water from trout pond as neutriants. next level down is storage.. as water trickles down the system from the pond etc etc it picks up a lot of shit so a elaborate filtration system is needed not to mention a way to store several tonnes of activated carbon and a few crates of anti bacterial pellets. Also you will need to store all the steel and shit you will need when you finally do flip your rocker and decide to cut and weld 3 tones of spikes onto your armour plated hummer so you can go on a joyride that will get one of your girlfriends killed while listening to montage music.
Bottom level is the usual your pimping palace Your room, your 3 wives room next door, while your 3 teen mistresses rooms are evenly across the hall. Not to there knowing though you also have a secret room with rape dungeon off your private bathroom where you keep two preteen sissies with boob implants to sodomise when the women are on there rags. Not to mention a torture rack in the living room where you can punish the girls that get to fat and occasionally dismember to ones that get to old or start refusing to swallow the log you just laid in there mouth because you built the place with the toilet to far away from the Movie room..

>>4482

Earthquake

>>4535
I won't build it in a bad place, and it will be at less risk than surface structures. Trust me, I'm a geotechnical engineer

>>4569

graboids

Damn worms never cut ya any slack.

>>4569
Tuurngait

>>4591
Restart the food industry! Graboid burgers! Graboid nuggets! Filet o grabiod! Ah it'll be a fastrack to recovery! Can I get a big grab, grabfries and a drink? Supersize plaese.xD

>>3131
Nope forced impregnation to all women i come across

>>The best bet is to just fit in a group and slowly take it over from the inside. Why do the hard work when you can take it from somebody else

I doubt you could take over anything that wasn't from McDonalds.

Jokes aside, how exactly would you "take over a group from the inside". I'd love to hear how someone with no talent whos main experience in real life comes down to "sits in front of a computer yelling at mom to bring me cheezy snacks" would go from the position of an outsider, to the head of whatever group they attempted to become a part of.

>>4961
Thank you for the laugh haven't heard graboids in awhile. Ah the memories.

As for the zombie apocalypse I would call/text all friends and family on day one while phones still work. Tell them where I'm going and what to bring with them. I would go to a local food or furniture warehouses or BJ's "other options acceptable" set up a group to come back to there, then go to the nearest corp dept store that sells guns, knives, bows, ammo, and survival gear. Sorry to take it from the walking dead but newcomers get the three questions. Use friends and family to dominate group and run things. Run a semi democratic community, have council but have it rigged.Build, and scavenge outward from base, collect and burn the redead. I'm a fit guy so I'd run raid parties.

I think there is only 2 possibility for the social organization:

We can have a charismatic and strong leader succeeding at unifying the people and a more-or-less dictatorship will be established.
Given the situation, he will have no other choice than establish a maoist-like policy and use force against all opponents.
While this assure us than we can farm safely from both zombies and looters, it will also result in atrocious living conditions. We will have to hide the food we make and we will be tortured by the police to give it. We basically have the choice of a hard working life, keeping a low profile all the time, and being killed. All rebellions will be solved in a bath of blood and there is a small chance for stalinist purges or Kmer rouge slaughtering.
After decades of this bullshit, situation should be stabilized and we could hope for a better future.

The second possibility is a total decay of civilization and a come back to dark ages. If there is no more guns, small groups of well armed and trained friends will loot farms, do whatever they want where they are and will finish to realize that they can just say they are the lords of a given place. Massive local conflicts and pillages will follow and we will slowly see a medieval hierarchy appear.
After century of farmers being slaughtered by wars, there is a chance that the productivity will be high enough so the strong people will rely on modern institutions rather than pure force to impose themselves in positions of power. Then, society can start again.

In any case, we are fucked.