Raiding: Basic strategy and tactics

[Faran Brigo]

We've talked often about the eventual need for raids to resupply. We will probably depend on whatever we can scavenge from the ruins until we get something better than a zero-sum economy going.

But although we always talk about raiding, I've never heard about specific strategy to do so, so here's my very unprofessional and likely wrong in some aspects theory on the subject. This assumes it's not just you, but a group of people (3 to 5 or so):

General guidelines: These can be summed up in the mnemonic P.I.R.A.T.E.

- Planning: Have a plan to go in. Try to plan strikes at daylight, zombies use all their senses equally and in the dark, they have an edge over you as they don't rely on their eyes as much as we do. Maximize safety, have some people dedicated exclusively to keep watch for threats, and the rest to find supplies and stash them in your means of carrying them back home; keep everyone armed and have everyone carry loot. Estimate the time it will take before too many zeds will gather around and make your escape too difficult.

- Information: Know exactly what you're going in for. What I mean by this is don't get sidetracked; Make a list of what you NEED and stick to it. Chances are you have limited carrying capacity, and while the crate of 12 gauge might be very useful, if your pressing need is pharmaceuticals, don't waste time on it if it's going to throw you off schedule and not the reason you're out today. When you have the time (when you're back home), jot down useful things that you've spotted during the raid so you know what is available where, when you need it.

- Recon: Try to identify entry and exit points from the outside, before you go in. Also try to get a headcount of the zeds loitering around, not just immediately outside but the ones within a few minutes range of the place you want to raid. When you DO go in, keep quiet and listen to any sounds that might alert you to people (or zombies) already inside the building.

- Armament: Carry the weapons for the job. If you're going into a small, cramped place bring the most compact weapons you can find. If on the other hand you're raiding a place with plenty of room and good vantage points, you might want to get something long with range. This applies both to firearms and melee weapons.

- Tools: You're not going to have a master key, so bring something along that can let you bypass locks, like crowbars, hatchets, heavy hammers, etc. If you don't have a vehicle (highly recommended) to load supplies on, needless to say you need to have a backpack, rucksack or duffel bag (the kind with a shoulder strap) to carry out your supplies. Avoid anything that requires you to hold it all the time, like regular plastic bags.

- Exit: Have several plans to bail out. Expect things to go badly, they often do in normal situations. If for some reason resistance is stiffer than expected or something is fishy, get out. There is usually more time to come back. Do not get involved in protracted combat, the zeds definitely will eventually outnumber and overwhelm you.

[Dave Of The Dead]

Nice. I like the idea of the guidelines. I would expect a lot of raids to be gun-ho death marches without proper panning and intel.

But would it really be easier in the day time? If the zeds use all of their senses equally at night, wouldn't they have slightly heightened senses at day (sight for the most part)?

[Faran Brigo]

Zombies use all their senses equally regardless of the time of the day. They do NOT get a boost to their abilities during day or night. They can see in daytime as much as we can and like us, they can't see in the dark.

At night we must change tactics (assuming you don't have NV gear). Outdoors we'll only be able to see faint outlines and indoors we won't be able to see at all without a flashlight. A flashlight in the dark is a zed beacon. Basically nighttime negates our advantage with ranged weapons and makes melee very hard since striking on the head is hard when you can't see the head well. Few of us have the skill to home in on a zed's head through their moans and decapitate or crush the skull.

Zed however does the same that he does at daylight. He will advance towards you with their arms forward and as soon as they get a hold of you they'll bite. The difference is they don't need any sort of precise aim, they just need to bite you anywhere on the body, and although they can't see you they know where you are because of the smell and sounds you make.

In short the difference here is that we depend on eyesight while they don't. We need eyes to aim for the head and to fight from long range, they don't fight long range and don't need to aim altogether since a "hit" from a zombie will kill you regardless of location.

[Faran Brigo]

This is a sample plan, proof-of-concept and inspiration only. The locations and layouts are real but they do not match, this is because it would be dificult and I think unethical to be faithful. If you are so inclined you can start to make your own plans as detailed and accurate as you want, this is merely a demonstration.



Red spots mark the directions where Zeds might be expected to come from. As you can see, the main risk here is the wide road, which is bound to have some stumbling ghouls and probably stalled or crashed vehicles. To the west of that location there's burbland, which means "risky".

Blue spots represent good vantage points to survey the situation. If you have enough people and a way to get them up there, these spots have a commanding view of the town, the road and the hills to the east.

The greenline is the way you come in, and hopefully your primary exfil route. If all goes as expected, you should go back home the way you came in to minimize risks.

The yellow line is your secondary escape route. This goes through a net of forking unpaved roads which are relatively easy to get lost in, and therefore it's a good bet if you have to lose a human tail.

The black line (minus the spots where the adresses should be) represent a third way out. This road leads to a stadium if you follow it all the way (which is bad), but forks about a couple of blocks before that happens, north leads to the stadium, east leads to hilly undeveloped terrain.

More info below

[Faran Brigo]

The place is in Wyoming, which has the lowest population density of any U.S. state. Beware that this precise town in an actual emergency would be a bad place to visit, since it's on route to Yosemite, and pleople are bound to try to head there to try to live in the wild. It's a shame because other than that it'd be an excellent place, but ah well...



Keep in mind, and I repeat, that this is not the actual layout of the store on the image above, it's just an example.

The plan here is to go in and out through the lube express, creep quietly to the section you need, take the stuff and high tail it same way. Stay the hell away from the front gates, and try to stay out of sight. This is easier said than done because unless you're exceptionally lucky, someone will have ransacked the place before you, which means there will be stuff on the floor, possibly slippery stuff, and the ocassional ghoul.

The same basic rules of indoors combat: Keep your eyes and ears open, stay close together, move carefully and slowly and in a way in which there are no blind spots (I.E. at least one person should cover every avenue of approach), leave a couple of people by your exit point to stand guard.

Use silenced or melee weapons to kill the ghouls if possible. If you have guns, always point them forward and be prepared to fire instantly (always engage your safety when not pointing them at something), keep them on your shoulder and don't fire from the hip. Have the safety off but keep your trigger finger a fair distance from it so you don't fire accidentally. Avoid fighting if at all possible, but pick off the stray ghouls that might give away your position or pose an unacceptable risk.

If you are forced to make a lot of noise, keep in mind lots of ghouls or even raiders now know there's a disturbance and will come to check it out, that means you should forego stealth and just hurry up. But don't get careless and run into a crowd of zeds. Resist the urge to run, running in a ransacked store means there's a good chance you'll slip or trip on something and at least slow down while you recover and at worse injure yourself.

Once you have all you need, and assuming everything went well, exit the building, take a quick peek at your exfil routes. Pick the safest one and high tail it.

[JakAttak]

Originally Posted by Faran Brigo

This is a sample plan, proof-of-concept and inspiration only. The locations and layouts are real but they do not match, this is because it would be dificult and I think unethical to be faithful. If you are so inclined you can start to make your own plans as detailed and accurate as you want, this is merely a demonstration.



Red spots mark the directions where Zeds might be expected to come from. As you can see, the main risk here is the wide road, which is bound to have some stumbling ghouls and probably stalled or crashed vehicles. To the west of that location there's burbland, which means "risky".

Blue spots represent good vantage points to survey the situation. If you have enough people and a way to get them up there, these spots have a commanding view of the town, the road and the hills to the east.

The greenline is the way you come in, and hopefully your primary exfil route. If all goes as expected, you should go back home the way you came in to minimize risks.

The yellow line is your secondary escape route. This goes through a net of forking unpaved roads which are relatively easy to get lost in, and therefore it's a good bet if you have to lose a human tail.

The black line (minus the spots where the adresses should be) represent a third way out. This road leads to a stadium if you follow it all the way (which is bad), but forks about a couple of blocks before that happens, north leads to the stadium, east leads to hilly undeveloped terrain.

More info below

damn you got this figured out but I would say put a few snipers in the blue and teams near the escape routes to keep them clear and quick recon near red to get a head count. Another thing that might pay off is a hot recon team to take out loitering Z's.

[Dave Of The Dead]

I don't know what your obsession is with sniping, but you really do have to realize that every team of zed survivalists will probably not have a skilled sniper. Trying to teach a member to snipe is just a waste of ammo compared to how well he could be doing from only 20 yards away. A plan like this would and should be for the average team, and not some elite squad of SWAT.

I think google earth/maps would be a wonderful thing to plan your scavenging or traveling routs. Good thinking.

[Faran Brigo]

Like I said before, it's inspiration and proof of concept. By all means make adjustments depending on your available resources and priorities. If you have sharpshooters in your team and the means to get them on the roof, do so, if you don't, fine. It goes without saying that satellite imagery will not be available once the outbreak starts. Start planning your routes and caches right now, save the info and print it when you have to.

As you said, it is a plan for novices. People with military/law enforcement experience will have their own ideas about how to carry this sort of thing out, probably better than what I've come up with thus far. Notice I did not mention the weapons, tools or any other equipment (other than stuff to carry supplies in). The reason for this is threefold:

1.- Equipment and weapons are already dealt with on plenty of other places to a depth I can't replicate (and shouldn't try to since this is not the subject), including threads here.

2.- It is impossible to say what it would take if you haven't actually been near the site. You might need wirecutters to get in, or maybe a sledgehammer to break a lock, or perhaps a crowbar would suffice, you won't know without recon on the specific site you want to raid. But most importantly...

3.- You work with the tools and talent you have. You might be fit enough to pull off climbing to the roof with a rope and hook (doubt it though), or maybe you have a light ladder that you can prop up. Maybe you don't even have motor vehicles so the plan's not contingent on that either. Maybe two or three of your team are sharpshooters, or maybe your team is only 5 people (in which case 2 should stay by the exit and 3 should do the actual scavenging).

[Hitman]

I've given quite a bit of thought to this. most of the raiding I have planned out involves a group of 4- 7 persons , either a van or suv ( a pickup could work or as an extra cargo hauler) , a good assortment of weapons , and plenty of forethought. I plan on sticking to mostly resedential houses for 2reasons. during the mass exodus to "safe" areas packing will be light if at all. those taken early will have not packed at all. also these areas need to be cleaned out of zeds to create a saftey buffer around your main safehouse . the closer you go at first the less time out in the open when zeds are still high in numbers. also most homes will open with a vigorous kick , so no need for alot of comotion. I also agree with the 2 sentrys at the entry/exit point . they will have longer ranged suppresed rifles to take both targets of opertunity to thin the overall zed #'s and to keep us from getting noticed. they will also have some serious firepower incase a large mob of zeds finds us. the entry team will have standard CQB firearms and more tools of the B&E trade , such as crowbars , hammers , cold chilsels , and possibly a diamond concrete saw (opens anything) . everything of use will be taken (if its not really usefull it can be discarded later) ,then when the house is emptied the door will be nailed/screwed shut to keep out wandering zombies and critters. it may be needed in the future .

[Faran Brigo]

I agree with the residential housing, but I think it might be a dangerous environment. Going house to house, historically it's always been a slow and bloody affair. Worst of all, I'm concerned that since we're talking about relatively small places it can be easy to become sorrounded. Then again, that's why you have sentries and a car. But I agree, I doubt individual houses would be extensively looted, most likely people will focus on superstores and the such.

I think the saw might be overkill, not many of us have houses built like fortresses. What kind of weapons are the sentries packing?

By the way, that gives me an idea: Perhaps it is best to arrange a supply cache (properly locked and discrete) where you take supplies before heading to your hq, that way you can reduce your risks and maximize efficiency. You go house to house then gather the loot (which will probably be more than you can carry on a single trip) and hide it in a few houses in special, safe spots. You take the things that are most urgent at the moment, and you can come back later if and when you need the rest.

[Hitman]

the saw will open any resedential safe . this could be more guns and ammo , valuables (society will rebuild and money will be used) , and safe rooms.

the sentries would have suppresed ruger 10/22's , and one would have my FAL as a backup , the other with my AK and a 75rd drum . plenty of spare mags for both the 22's and the bigger guns.I could swap out the FAl for my mini 14 with the 90rd drum but the fal beats it hands down in both range and accuracy. sidearms would be high capacity 9mm's . if things get rough the entry team wil be coming back out anyway with what they have as well. it would take a lot of zeds to make it through the hail of lead that could come from a 5 man team that was both well armed and well trained.its not like the vehicals would be more that a few feet away either.

[Augustus Desius]

I haven't read through all of this yet, as I've been short on attention today. So, if human v. human has already been discussed, ignore coming questions.

With a quick glance, it looks like this raid plan is based on acquisition of resources from a zombie controlled zone. But, what if you're attempting to raid a zone that is occupied by humans? Humans should always be entered into the equation. Even one can foil a good plan, by blowing your cover, attacking witout provocation, or attempting to kill you or yours for supplies.

For example, if you entered a city, you were unaware of human presence, and they open fire on you for leading an organized attack into their territory. Or, if two raids were to occur at once, and one side wouldn't make it a joint operation. There may only be enough for one group. How goes the assault then?

[Faran Brigo]

I think the chances of a five man team being overwhelmed depend mostly on the amount of zeds coming, and I figure out "too many" is a good rule of thumb, since I prefer to err on the side of caution. If you can funnel the zeds into a decent killzone, yes, I believe you can hold out indefinitely, but if you got zack coming all around you, even with five trained sets of eyes it will be very difficult to keep track of everything happening, and to keep downing them as fast as they can come.

This ultimately depends on the expected number of zack in the area. What you're saying sounds excellent for the little town on the pic above, but personally I'd be wary of trying that on infill, it might draw zeds all the way from the adyacent urban areas, and I don't think it's feasible to carry enough ammo to deal with that kind of numbers.

As for living humans, up there on the first post you might have noticed that I brushed the subject. Recon should reveal humans who don't attempt to (or ar no good at) concealing their presence. If not or if it just happens that you bump into a hostile raiding party, I'd say retreat. Standard infantry combat tactics apply here, lay down a base of fire and use bounding overwatch.

Humans are far more dangerous than zack, and fighting other humans in dead man's land means you're fighting two enemies at once. This is not a desirable situation.

Finding another supply source might take weeks or months. Finding another dependable and combat capable person to replace losses might take months or years or at worst be impossible, and a team is more than the sum of it's parts as fireteam members usually develop personal bonds that make them more effective than a disciplined group of strangers. Supplies are expendable, manpower is not.

[Darkness]

Originally Posted by Faran Brigo

As for living humans, up there on the first post you might have noticed that I brushed the subject. Recon should reveal humans who don't attempt to (or ar no good at) concealing their presence. If not or if it just happens that you bump into a hostile raiding party, I'd say retreat. Standard infantry combat tactics apply here, lay down a base of fire and use bounding overwatch.

Humans are far more dangerous than zack, and fighting other humans in dead man's land means you're fighting two enemies at once. This is not a desirable situation. Supplies are expendable, manpower is not.

"Well put, Faran Brigo. Good reply."

[Augustus Desius]

Originally Posted by Faran Brigo

I think the chances of a five man team being overwhelmed depend mostly on the amount of zeds coming, and I figure out "too many" is a good rule of thumb, since I prefer to err on the side of caution. If you can funnel the zeds into a decent killzone, yes, I believe you can hold out indefinitely, but if you got zack coming all around you, even with five trained sets of eyes it will be very difficult to keep track of everything happening, and to keep downing them as fast as they can come.

This ultimately depends on the expected number of zack in the area. What you're saying sounds excellent for the little town on the pic above, but personally I'd be wary of trying that on infill, it might draw zeds all the way from the adyacent urban areas, and I don't think it's feasible to carry enough ammo to deal with that kind of numbers.

As for living humans, up there on the first post you might have noticed that I brushed the subject. Recon should reveal humans who don't attempt to (or ar no good at) concealing their presence. If not or if it just happens that you bump into a hostile raiding party, I'd say retreat. Standard infantry combat tactics apply here, lay down a base of fire and use bounding overwatch.

Humans are far more dangerous than zack, and fighting other humans in dead man's land means you're fighting two enemies at once. This is not a desirable situation.

Finding another supply source might take weeks or months. Finding another dependable and combat capable person to replace losses might take months or years or at worst be impossible, and a team is more than the sum of it's parts as fireteam members usually develop personal bonds that make them more effective than a disciplined group of strangers. Supplies are expendable, manpower is not.

Ah, thanks mate, I'll try to read a bit more carefully next time around. Agreed on manpower vs supplies, Good posts and subject by the way .

How long have you been planning this out?