Ask Lemmy

hold up

And a bone apple tea to you!

a 1950s school building. they were built like castles. have wide open lawns and high towers. windows were at least a story above grade, and the glass had that mesh embedded inside.

any windows or doors that are at grade can easily be barricaded or already are with high grade steel cages.

bonus if there's an internal courtyard that can be used as a field for growing crops, water retention area, and just an outdoor exercise area.

schools already have a cafeteria and kitchen, showers, fitness and entertainment, first-aid and medical, an entire library, science/biological labs. many schools have also been retrofitted with solar panels as well.

a school is really the best place to hold up for any kind of natural disaster.

I choose to secure all of North America.

Assuming zombies are incapable of any higher reasoning, somewhere only accessible by climbing up a ladder or rope.

It works in PZ, it might work IRL.

Billionaire’s bunker island. Be the security guy with a gun that realizes that money doesn’t matter when civilization falls.

Costco.

Small number of secure entrances. A lifetime supply of batteries and solar kits. Tons of shelf stable food and drink. Clothing. Tacky home decor to make the apocalypse feel more homey.

It would be great.

The Rockies. There’s already a low population in a lot of areas, millions of acres set aside as wilderness, fresh water and game, wood, steep terrrain, fire lookouts/ranger cabins/cabins/abandoned mines. Winter show would also slow/hinder zombies and make for an easier kill. The downside is that I know I wouldn’t be the only one and the main threat would be all the other backcountry survivalists heading for the hills and defending their resources.

There was a movie/TV show where the character was hunkered down in a wind turbine. Always thought it was a clever idea.

Any location? An automated Oneill cylinder.

any, I'm gonna say the Fortress of Solitude from Superman

Look, I need to spend my efforts on the toxicity and climate collapse apocalypse. I would WELCOME zombies at this point.

Just any yard with a distinct lack of my milkshakes really.

It's "hole up," by the way.

A shopping mall, so I can pick up a flashlight, duct tape some jewelry on it and use it as a lightsaber

I got an old abandoned insane asylum on the top of a hill next to a naturally occurring spring kinda near me. You really couldn't ask for a better location. Farm on the roof.

Nuclear powered carrier ship in the middle of the ocean.

A mall. Obviously not a great survival choice, but it sure would he fun!

It entirely depends on what kind of zombies.

An island? Seems like a great way to isolate yourself from the masses

A yacht. It's got solar power, water desalination, can get to uninhabited islands

"Secure" as in "fortify it against zombies and potentially other threats"

Or as in "I can get to it and lay some sort of claim to it"

Because if it's the former, we probably need to put some restrictions on the scenario. That's really the hard part of this and we're just assuming we can do it, and your best bet is probably to secure as big of an area as possible. A city, a country, a whole hemisphere, or hell, the entire world or the solar system if we're being really silly.

If we're going with the latter, where we find a building or property of some kind and call "dibs" and the rest of it is up to us

I think a tech school is a pretty good bet, at least thinking of my local tech schools.

They have some fully stocked workshops with pretty much any tools and materials you could need- carpentry, plumbing, automotive, electrical, etc.

Maybe some kind of medical program, so probably a decent amount of meds and first aid equipment, in addition to whatever is in the nurse's office.

A culinary program, so you have a well equipped kitchen and probably a decent amount of food on-hand.

Maybe it even has some sort of agricultural program with some farming equipment, maybe even some ready-to-go planted crops and possibly livestock.

Most schools are fairly secure with limited entrances and locking doors often they have backup generators and maybe even solar these days (odds are any school with a decent electrical program at least has a few solar panels kicking around somewhere) and you have the tools and maybe the materials there to further fortify it as needed.

And it probably has some pretty beefy fire suppression systems since you have teenagers playing with welders and industrial stoves/ovens.

Some college campuses might be as good or better for the same reasons, with the added benefits of there probably being some purpose-made living quarters, but they're usually less compact, which has its plusses and minuses, more land to grow crops and such but harder to secure.

And if the apocalypse hits while school is in session, you have a bunch of young, hopefully reasonably-healthy people already on-hand to do some of the hard work if like me you're not quite as spry as you used to be.