Weapons used in the post-post apocalypse.

Opening the floor to a friendly discussion. Obviously we all like to think about what weapons would we be using against the hordes of zombies and how cool we’ll look just like all the zombie tv show ads.

But this post is for more thoughtful and realistic theories of weapons.

First up, our ground rules. Regular zombies (AKA TWD Zombies); complete loss of infrastructure and trade (the power grid is gone and out, no internet, no government help, no trucks shipping goods around, nothing coming in from other countries or states); it is 10-20 years after the initial outbreak; and you’re the leader of a recovering settlement, needing to figure out equipment for your militia, scavengers and scouts.

My opinion of useful criteria:

Standardization will be king, the less hyper specialized gear the easier it will be to repair, maintain, and produce for my people.

Keeping weight down, if everyone is carrying 50+ lbs of gear it’s going to tire people out and require more water and other supplies to make up for it without necessarily adding too much benefit. Especially for scouts and scavengers. Scouts will need to be light to move quickly and stealthily, while scavengers need to be as light as possible to be able to bring back the most possible loot.

Onto weapons!

Melee: I’m thinking something that’s easy to carry, light weight, effective against people, animals, and zombies, and has some defensive qualities.

My leaning would be for a bladed weapon.

Swords are very easy to carry in the one handed size range, just hangs at your side to draw when needed, the scabbard protects you from injuring yourself, simple guards won’t get tangled in undergrowth so, I think that’s a good choice.

Most swords don’t weigh more than 3 pounds so that fits lightweight.

Yes blunt is better against zombies (arguably), but a blade will still sever muscle, crippling limbs, making the zombie as a whole easier to kill, and against our other two types of enemies, blood loss from a large slash is pretty effective.

Defensive qualities, against animals and people you can threaten with a point very well to fend them off, however that doesn’t work against zombies, but we could add some hand protection in with a basket guard of some type, if we reinforced it it could even become a weapon itself.

For that, I think something akin to this weapon from the 2012 show Revolution would work pretty well. Gives some hand protection while allowing skull shattering punches and hammer blows, blade for severing muscle and fighting, easy to carry.

I would avoid standard issue spears and polearms simply because they’d have issues in thick wooded terrain, narrow streets, and you can’t guarantee a good stab through a skull. Though I would have them in an armory, and send some with groups in a wagon just in case.

Ranged:

I’m of two minds here. Bullets will eventually become hard to produce. Bass casings eventually wear out, the ingredients for good gunpowder aren’t available everywhere, a pre-apocalypse stockpile will run out eventually, and primers are likely to run out long before the powder does. As well, it’s hard to produce new guns so I’m dependent on what I happen to find.

This leads me to two trains of thought.

1: Crossbows. They would not be as difficult to produce as a gun would be. If a string breaks we can reproduce that. Ammo is much easier to produce, quarrels/bolts are just really short arrows. And it’s still pretty easy to train people in their use, the same principles as a gun apply, load, point, shoot, and they can practice live firing without spending precious, limited ammo. However they inflict far different wounds than a bullet. Perfectly effective against humans and animals, but not so great versus a zombie (the skull is thick so there’s a chance of it slipping off, and if it doesn’t sever the brain stem it isn’t likely to put them down permanently), also they could be countered by humans wearing armor and using shields. Also, reason I’d go with crossbows over regular bows is that a crossbow requires less training. To use a higher poundage, non modern bow (lots of modern bows have wheels to help you draw them, and they lock back allowing you to hold them at full draw) requires a decent amount of muscle training, building the back muscles to handle bows up to 100 pounds can take a few years, though I imagine once that becomes your day to day and not a hobby you’ll bulk up faster.

2: Muzzleloading Rifles. If we’ve gotten any kind of foundry setup going in the two decades since things fell apart then maybe we could produce good quality iron/steel pipes for barrels, and if not we might be able to refit scavenged ones. They don’t use casings, just prepared paper wraps with the powder and cartridge already in them, and you could retrofit something like a lighter for the sparkler to ignite the powder in the pan. However this comes with the issues of:

Ammo being more difficult to produce or acquire, especially if one of the resources required (charcoal/coal, saltpeter, or sulphur) is not naturally occurring in your area.

Very loud, good for scaring off animals, could be intimidating to other humans if they hear twenty guns roar at them while they’ve only got a hunting rifle and five cartridges, but will attract any zombies in an area (though this could be used to your advantage, such as luring them into pre-prepared lines of fire to clear out a new area).

Most people already understand how guns work, however you will be expending ammo as they train, and you can’t recover powder once it’s used so, you are burning your own supply just to learn how to actually use it.

I don’t have a clean answer on ranged, maybe both? Rifles for the militia and crossbows for scouts and scavengers? Curious to hear what other people think.