Taking out a zed

[Dave Of The Dead]

Lets just say that you are just finishing a raid on a super market. You sling your pack over your shoulder and holster you gun. As you walk out and turn a zombie stumbled toward you, mouth open and moaning. You draw your pistol and click click click!You're out of ammo! You have just enough time to draw your trusty melee weapon, whatever it may be! How do you kill this zombie?

ex: decapitation, penetration of the skull, bashing in the skull, ect.

[ghdeh1]

I pull out a stick and poke him away and walk away oh oops ummm... machette

[Dave Of The Dead]

The question is "How you would you take out the zombie?"

note the

ex: decapitation, penetration of the skull, bashing in the skull, ect.

[Faran Brigo]

Depends on the melee weapon:

Blunt force, short: Solid whack to the temples is my best bet I think.

Blunt force, long: Step back/sidestep, knock him down (aim at the knees) then try to drive it through an eyesocket.

Edged, short: Penetration of the skull

Edged, long: Decapitation


Thankfully due to horrible coordination, no reflexes and minimal speed slow zombies are notoriously bad melee fighters. Ben took on a whole mob of them in NOTLD and he was no Stallone.

[Running From Zombies]

Assuming a fast zombie, I'm trying to think of the best way to hold it off while you use your knife to get at the base of the skull. How well would holding the neck work? Would it be difficult to get your hand there under the gnashing teeth and the chin shielding it?

[Screwballgunnut]

Originally Posted by Running From Zombies

Assuming a fast zombie, I'm trying to think of the best way to hold it off while you use your knife to get at the base of the skull. How well would holding the neck work? Would it be difficult to get your hand there under the gnashing teeth and the chin shielding it?

Turn off the movie screen, folks. Stop and think about all the times you've bonked your head on the underside of the car, fallen off a horse & landed head first, flipped a 4 wheeler and landed on your head, etc. Now consider how many times you've had skull fractures. We've all heard stories of .22's & .25's deflecting off of someone's skull. I've seen people in 2 vehicle car crashes (each vehicle at 70ish mph) get bounced around between the rear seats of a van, their skull got cracked, but no "splattering" of gray matter inside the van. In fact, in all the fatals I've worked, I've never seen a split open skull. Speaking of skulls, how often do you hear of skulls lasting several hundred years after someone's death? Quite regularly. Point being: The human skull is VERY stout. Driving a knife through someone's skull is not going to be one light shove like you see in the movies with a pocket knife. Its going to take some serious force, a direct blow to one or two relatively small, specific spots, and a VERY stout fixed blade.

Decapitation is not much of an option, as even back when it was a preferred method of execution and the executioners had big heavy axes, it was still messy & required repeated blows to severe the head from the body. The one chop lop off is not a reasonable expectation. I liked the LotD scene where the zed with the partially decapitated head used a shoulder lunge to fling his head forward and bite the prissy bullfighter guy, as that would probably be the common occurrence when you try to decapitate a zed.

The skull crunch after one blow with a baseball bat, tire iron, pry bar or ball peen hammer just isn't a reasonable expectation, either, unless of course you're up against the army of frail, osteoporosis riddled grandmother zeds. Blows to the body, while ineffective for killing a zed, would stand a much higher likelihood of landing a blow that will disable & slow the zed to a point where you can escape.

To the OP: I pull my pistol, it goes click, I check the safety, and then go through a reloading/clearance drill, and resume firing, while backpedaling to put distance between me and said zed. In the event of a weapon malfunction, I toss that gun aside and go to one of my spares. The day that I run out of ammo is a good day to die

[Lian]

For one my gun wouldn't click empty unless there is a few of them cause I would take the time to reload, and count my shots as a fire. If I'm out of ammo that would have been the first thing on my to raid list.

So caught in the situation that I have no ammo and I'm in close quarters. I bust my knife out hamstring the bastard, shove him away and put leather to pavement. Or back pedal till a better option shows itself.

[Running From Zombies]

Originally Posted by Screwballgunnut

Turn off the movie screen, folks. Stop and think about all the times you've bonked your head on the underside of the car, fallen off a horse & landed head first, flipped a 4 wheeler and landed on your head, etc. Now consider how many times you've had skull fractures. We've all heard stories of .22's & .25's deflecting off of someone's skull. I've seen people in 2 vehicle car crashes (each vehicle at 70ish mph) get bounced around between the rear seats of a van, their skull got cracked, but no "splattering" of gray matter inside the van. In fact, in all the fatals I've worked, I've never seen a split open skull. Speaking of skulls, how often do you hear of skulls lasting several hundred years after someone's death? Quite regularly. Point being: The human skull is VERY stout. Driving a knife through someone's skull is not going to be one light shove like you see in the movies with a pocket knife. Its going to take some serious force, a direct blow to one or two relatively small, specific spots, and a VERY stout fixed blade.

Since you quoted me I'm going to assume this was in part directed at me. You do realize there's a hole in the skull where the spine connects, yes?

[Screwballgunnut]

Originally Posted by Running From Zombies

Since you quoted me I'm going to assume this was in part directed at me. You do realize there's a hole in the skull where the spine connects, yes?

First, yes, it was partly directed at you. It was also directed at the others who believe one whack with a baseball bat will crush a human skull. It just ain't so.

Second, yes, I do realize there is a hole in the skull. Its called the foramen magnum and is one of many holes (also known as foremen) in the base of the occipital bone. It is called the foramen magnum because it is the largest of the foramen and is on average 30-35mm in diameter, or 1.18-1.379 inches. If you feel like you can reliably stab a knife through that opening on a writhing, biting zed (or a living person), go right ahead. Also, let me remind you that the foramen magnum is partially shielded by the vertebrae of the spine, muscles and cartilage, making that 1.18-1.379 inch hole even smaller.

The fact that we're discussing killing zeds doesn't mean that the rules of anatomy or physics suddenly go out the window. I have done a significant amount of reading on human anatomy, and a fair amount of reading on historical accounts of executions, and I'm not just randomly making comments to piss you off.

[Faran Brigo]

When I said edged weapons, I thought about axes. I think those could break a skull.

Edit: Yeah blunt weapons probably won't do much. Still, if it's all you have, you might as well go down fighting.

Edit to the edit: Wouldn't bone necrosis significantly weaken the skull of a zombie?

[Dave Of The Dead]

Okay, hold the phone. I'm talking about the zombie is right in your face. The only thing you have time for is to grab whatever your melee weapon is. If you want to reload your gun with a zombie in your face, about to gnaw off your arm, go ahead and put the barrel right under your chin while you're at it.

You people don't seem to get the idea here. I hear tell of everyone with their blunt objects, their ninja swords, their crowbars, or whatever. But I never hear anyone tell me how they intend to use them in a close combat situation.

You know why it took repeated blows when executioners tried to decapitate with an axe? There are a few reasons actually. The executioner's ax is VERY unbalanced. As they would start chopping, the blade would turn slightly, and botch the attempt. Others wouldn't sharpen their blades before hand.
HOWEVER!

We are not talking about executing a sitting duck. We are talking about fending off a zombie that is no more than 4 ft. from you. So grab your god damn base ball bat, machete, hatchet, or whatever you plan on carrying with you and tell me how you plan to dispatch this zed! I don't want any spare pistol tucked in your shoe bullsh*t either. Now, go!

[bandits1]

In light of how difficult and time-consuming it seems to be getting access to the brain of a zombie with any melee weapon short of a +5 Dwarven Battle Axe, the best bet looks like it's hobbling the zombie first to limit it's mobility...then run like hell to get more bullets.

[Faran Brigo]

What about a massive flamberge of the leech? :p

Seriously though, yes it's not easy to break or pierce a human skull, but it's not uniform in thickness, some spots (and some skulls) are thicker than others. Provided you try to do it with something heavy and hard enough, I think it'll work alright. Something like a heavy hammer, a big crowbar or a hatchet.

[Running From Zombies]

Originally Posted by Screwballgunnut

First, yes, it was partly directed at you. It was also directed at the others who believe one whack with a baseball bat will crush a human skull. It just ain't so.

Second, yes, I do realize there is a hole in the skull. Its called the foramen magnum and is one of many holes (also known as foremen) in the base of the occipital bone. It is called the foramen magnum because it is the largest of the foramen and is on average 30-35mm in diameter, or 1.18-1.379 inches. If you feel like you can reliably stab a knife through that opening on a writhing, biting zed (or a living person), go right ahead. Also, let me remind you that the foramen magnum is partially shielded by the vertebrae of the spine, muscles and cartilage, making that 1.18-1.379 inch hole even smaller.

The fact that we're discussing killing zeds doesn't mean that the rules of anatomy or physics suddenly go out the window. I have done a significant amount of reading on human anatomy, and a fair amount of reading on historical accounts of executions, and I'm not just randomly making comments to piss you off.

I think I'll stay with the military's contention that aiming for the base of the skull is, among many others, an applicable take-down tactic.

[JakAttak]

whip out my crowbar and nail him through the skull cap with the sharp edge.