You know I've been looking into melee weapons besides the katana.
Apparently the "Grain Berays" use a shovel for melee combat. Cool beans? Not as cool beans as the ballistic knife (used by Spetsnaz). Deadliest Warrior compared the two, and ballistic knife was the victor. Though, from the comparisons, I learned having multiple ballistic knives could save your ass.

Though zombies are a different case. I wouldn't be using ballistic knives for pure melee vs zombies, I would be using them for an alternative to throwing knives. For melee, I'm debating what I should be using. In the world of long reach melee weapons, I want to see if a lightweight halbert would work. It can stab, slash, and bash. Pro would be that it could hit multiple zombies. Con is that after-swing control is difficult without experience. For medium reach weapons, I can't necessarily decide. Would a spartan styled short-sword be better suited than the weeaboo-slicer?

Uh...you mean Green Berets?

Probably not, but it'd be a lot more interesting if they did talk about things they had or would have quick easy access to. As nice as it would be, getting your hands on military weapons is unlikely.

In Australia, you could realistically get your hands on:

Low calibre rimfire rifles (perhaps centrefire up to .303 ones if in a rural area)
"Manual" Shotguns (no semi auto or pump)
9mm and below handguns

Even then, you're likely to find that anywhere near a city, 1 in 50 or fewer homes actually have firearms of any kind around.
Read: no SMGS, ARs, BRs, Rockets, Grenades, etc etc.
IEDs would be possible in terms of explosives.

Obviously that's different in different countries and different regions, but I think it'd be more conducive to interesting discussion if we talked less about "ideal" and more about "viable" (like non is).

That said:
@sothe: A short sword would be okay because they were generally somewhere between a club and a sword, but they were still pretty heavy.
Honestly the best blade based melee would be a machete or something very sharp on a pole.
Axes would be okay for small numbers because they've got a lot of impact behind them.
A crowbar would be alright but you'd get tired out pretty quickly.

Circular saws are the only type of non-mounted saw that would reliably not jam on contact with skin, but most modern ones have anti-amputation safety switches and whatnot. The fact that anything with any grunt behind it will need mains power is also a pretty limiting factor, but saws like that could make for interesting traps with some electrical knowledge. Could be fun for a rainy, zed-quiet day.

Western Aus has extremely tough laws on firearms - I believe all handguns and shotguns are banned except for the obvious police, government etc. Rifles are all bolt action, no semi-automatics. Crossbows were recently outlawed as well. Just read up on it a bit more - turns out that they are allowed but only for farmers and sportsmen. Police etc excepted.

With a bit of modification, the closest you could get to an SMG is a nailgun from the local hardware store, but I don't know much about that.

A ballistic knife will cause bleeding and stab organs, neither of which a zombie would give half a ♥♥♥♥ about. The entrenching tool on the other hand, you could hack a zombie's head open/off. And that's not even considering other potential uses, such as a shovel.

@Geti: A crowbar would get tiring, yes, but aside from the weapon aspect, it's got the whole crowbar thing going. Pry ♥♥♥♥ open, use as a tool, etc. But I changed my mind, I'd want one of these little bastards.

That's the joke

The plan would be pretty simple, just fortify home, and get all the suplies we can get pereodically wasting zombies near our place so that they wont gatherup in large quantities. And wait till they all die.

This loadout would be sweet!

But i'll probably endup with this...

When I was suggesting .22lr rifles, that wasn't only because that's what I thought to be a nearly ideal weapon for that particular circumstance. They're also something I'd wager to be viable for many people, because they're pretty common globally where any firearms are, and the ammo is found commonly, in high numbers, and for relatively cheap. The third reason I brought that to the discussion, is that they're my best option in my circumstance, because I have a few .22lr rifles, and a stupid amount of ammo for them, and it would do the job without the disadvantages of choosing overkill, given the zombies are slow and as vulnerable as people to bullets in the head.
But those overkill alternatives could potentially be useful in particular situations, such as hunting, or use against uninfected, so I'd keep them around and readied as well, of course.

On the subject of Molotov cocktails, I don't think they'd be as effective as you'd think when used directly against zombies. If you want an effect of 'area denial, firewall, burning ground, etc' then the only part of the zombie the fuel could stick to, walking through, (if you even bothered with thickening the fuel) would be their feet or shoes. Now, that, along with walking through the fire, would hurt the zombie and impede their abilities, but it would be unlikely to right out stop them unless they really stayed in it. I think the only effect you'd achieve there is making the situation more chaotic for yourself. The splashing spread on the ground would be unlikely to have a radius much greater than a meter, so if you're intending for them to avoid the fire, it'd need to be a tight space, or they'd walk around it. Throwing one with thickened sticky fuel directly at a zombie would cause them major injury and disorientation, eventually killing them, so that would work, but it's still a chaotic, dangerous, and heavy tool that would probably kill no more than two zombies. More strategic use of them, such as burning down flammable structures to kill a bunch of zombies inside, could circumstantially be very useful, though.

So you'd intend for molotovs to serve what purpose against gangs/rioters?
I can only think of it putting their vehicles out of commission, and burning their place down, but you'd have to have the drop on them to do either, so doing so defensively would be unlikely/difficult.

Successfully chucking one directly at someone who's armed and started the conflict would be unimaginably unlikely, so I assume that's not what you were getting at at all.


Related to bombs, making a minefield of these 'red buttons' could be a handy defense for your fort/stronghold/whatever, if you're not shooting for being super-quiet.

12 Gauge shells, toothpicks, 3/4" steel threaded pipe nipples cut in half, 3/4" steel pipe threaded caps, shortened/sharpened flat-head nails, glue.

This was based on a more complicated design I saw that would probably work better, but this requires fewer materials, allowing you to make them in bigger numbers. I'd use cheap numerous birdshot for it, since it would mess up feet pretty bad too, but is far from ideal for, you know, actually shooting them, since they're certainly bigger than turkeys.

@Azukki and Non - I wasn't actually talking about you guys as you've been sticking to the sort of discussion that I'm perfectly happy to be a part of, I was really just intending to lay down some ground rules for those putting AR-15s etc in their sheets. If you've got one, cool - say that please. This is why knowing a location is helpful - US laws are very different to UK laws which are very different to AU laws (and some EU laws).

@Non: what of raiders with guns? Shootout?

@Geti: Honestly, in America, you can get just about anything you want if you can afford it and go through the proper paperwork (See: FPSRussia, a resident of Georgia) There are some things which have negative stigmas attached to them due to events like Columbine or recent wars, and are harder to acquire- for instance, automatic assault rifles, explosive weaponry, etc- and some things which are just flat out banned, but these are usually very specific nation-wide bans, like ballistic knives, or restricted to a handful of states, like suppressors.

My example of the AR-15: Semi-automatic variants chambered for 5.56 and .223 are available pretty much anywhere in the US (automatic might be useful in a pinch but I think you'd generally stick with semi-auto anyways) and you could purchase a suppressor for it legally in my state, so it's not a huge stretch to imagine owning one. I personally don't, though I do have a friend of the redneck variety (the "shoot a squirrel with a .22 and then skin it and bring the skin to school the next day" kind of redneck) who does, so...

You can get a full auto AR if you're in a state that's not particularly regulatory of guns, if the receiver was made before '86 (I think it was) it was properly registered, you haven't committed felonies, do a bunch of papers, wait for them for months, pay a $200 tax, and then can afford to buy the thing itself which is like twelve to fifteen thousand dollars.

There are even Miniguns going around under those regulations. For like, infinity dollars.

That made my day.

Well, going serious, if I needed to go zombie killing I'd like to know what can be done to effectively kill them, aside from the headshot.

I mean, they are alive, so they should die from bleeding, right? It's not like they cells run on mystic stuff and don't need nutrients and thingies. And they should also die if they didn't have oxygen, because cells can't do metabolism thingies without it.

And they shouldn't be fast or strong at all. I suppose that they should be rotting, which would turn them into easier targets for stabs and cuts, so going melee shouldn't be a completely bad idea (bad ideas: pen knives, fists, scissors, you know what I mean).

Man, we need to do some zombie biology studies.

I've been imagining the "vaguely somewhat scientifically believable" zombies, people with an infection that aren't dead or rotting or anything, but completely mental changed, into a creature with extreme aggression and cannibalistic hunger towards anything uninfected and living. Maybe slow because of other symptoms, and/or resistant to pain. (but not injuries themselves)

Most probably you are right.

If they were rotting their cells would be dead, so they wouldn't move at all. They wouldn't live at all. Unless many cells died but most vital ones remained intact.

Still, in the case of zombie apocalypse, after having (if I survive) my stronghold, I'd try to capture a zombie and experiment with them, to understand more on beating their asses. But that probably wouldn't be an easy job.