Zombie Apocalypse

Status
Not open for further replies.
You two do realize that sight weighs 2.3 lbs?


blaxsun said:
A 6x ACOG and an IR optic.
Click to expand...

Clubhopper said:
Trijicon TA648MGO-308 with Trijicon RMR on top + KAC Irons a-la British Army L129A1 Sharpshooter Rifle style.
This setup:
5405217670_f3f5942e5d_o.179183320_std.jpg
Click to expand...
 
heavy metal said:
we aren't just talking zombies, we are talking ultimate survival. A subsonic .22lr has a better chance of staying inside a skull and mushing it than any other round out there.
A shot gun is only good for house clearing, i wouldn't trust it for anything other than 5-10 feet, and even then why not just use a 22. You may kid but amount of ammo, noise, and recoil are paramount:

Amount of ammo: why carry 100 rounds at 30 lbs, when you can carry 20 times that for less weight, bullets don't last forever;
Noise: why alert every zombie to your location within 3 km?
recoil: 10 zombies are approaching, 10 quick head shots sure beats 1, readjust, 2 readjust, 3, readjust, 4 readjust, 5 re....dinner.
Think man, this is beginner stuff :)
Click to expand...

That's actually a common misconception. A .22lr will not bounce around inside the skull. The round will either stop when it hits the other side of the skull or penetrate it.
 
epic said:
I think a .22 would just piss them off. Need more carnage.
Click to expand...

Baseball bat then? I think a .22 would do plenty of damage. Now lets up the stakes here guys, say #### does hit the fan I don't think we'll need to worry about slow dumb zombies, I would be willing to bet that it would be more of a "28 days/28 weeks later" type of scenario.

Why? Well because we already know how dangerous an animal with rabies gets and all it would take it some mutated virus that is 10X worse and now you'd have crazy flesh thirsty people after you that are just as fast.

The bright side is that if you hit them in any vital part of their body they're as good as gone.
 
heavy metal said:
fair enough, end of the day a nice tidy tunnel through the brain is all that counts :D
Click to expand...

Considering this is a zombie thread...actually that really does not count. As pointed out earlier, eliminating the crossword puzzle section of the brain and counting on it to stop a zombie seems like a bizarre gamble and a serious failure of logic to me.

If I were to be faced with zombies, a 5.56 would be my first choice for a chambering. Enough to obliterate the overwhelming majority of brain tissue in 99.9% of cases. Absolutely no question of ability to penetrate the frontal bone. Why use a marginal round like a .22? Carrying a bag of two thousand won't help much if they aren't reliable, and unless I have gotten WAY out of the loop, I don't believe that anyone here has any experience in the matter.

Therefore, we have no choice but to fall back on experience with actual human beings, who, I think we can assume, are more sensitive to brain trauma than zombies.

And .22lr is not really that reliable on HUMAN headshots! So using it on zombies...really a major disaster waiting to happen. Slightly off center on the frontal...might skip. Hit the petrous portion...probably deflect. Really an unreliable option.

I'd use it if I KNEW I could hole up on a water tower for a month and casually plink zombies. I would NEVER, EVER rely on it for a primary.
 
misanthropist said:
Considering this is a zombie thread...actually that really does not count. As pointed out earlier, eliminating the crossword puzzle section of the brain and counting on it to stop a zombie seems like a bizarre gamble and a serious failure of logic to me.

If I were to be faced with zombies, a 5.56 would be my first choice for a chambering. Enough to obliterate the overwhelming majority of brain tissue in 99.9% of cases. Absolutely no question of ability to penetrate the frontal bone. Why use a marginal round like a .22? Carrying a bag of two thousand won't help much if they aren't reliable, and unless I have gotten WAY out of the loop, I don't believe that anyone here has any experience in the matter.

Therefore, we have no choice but to fall back on experience with actual human beings, who, I think we can assume, are more sensitive to brain trauma than zombies.

And .22lr is not really that reliable on HUMAN headshots! So using it on zombies...really a major disaster waiting to happen. Slightly off center on the frontal...might skip. Hit the petrous portion...probably deflect. Really an unreliable option.

I'd use it if I KNEW I could hole up on a water tower for a month and casually plink zombies. I would NEVER, EVER rely on it for a primary.
Click to expand...

I think it is fair to say that both rounds are proven human killers therefore zombie killers. I think there has to be a consensus on what part of the zombie brain needs to be destroyed before assuming that human brains are more sensitive. If we were to go off of what books and movies tell us (what else really do we have to go on :)) a zombie can be destroyed by a blade to the brain.

medium to close range the round will penetrate the skull and destroy the brain, granted there will be the odd need for a double tap, a need that will lessen the closer you get. With that, what is simpler than double tapping with a .22? there is no need to take a zombie at long ranges, if it is that far, let it go.

the main selling feature with the .22 is the amount of ammo that one can carry, this really isn't being given enough credibility. Like i've said before, ammo won't last forever and the amount of .22 that can be carried/stored will be more than any other round period. Also the noise is a major benefit, a 223 is loud and will alert zombies for miles, a .22 very much less so.

i saw a .17 hmr post....which may indeed be the perfect round....small as the .22 with much more penetrating power...i do like that idea
 
Problems I see with .17HMR on zombies is that they are almost all varmint rounds and will fragment when hitting a grape so you probably won't get a lot of bone penetration, there are very few semi auto platforms and I haven't seen any high capacity mags.

You would need something that will go through the skull every shot and have lots of high cap mags. I go back to the noisy .223 in an AR platform for a reliable zombie stopper. Don't shoot unless you have to, save your ammo for the ones trying to eat you and your loved ones.

Once again just to address the op's opening question. Zero or low magnification optic preferably without batteries or at least something that uses AA or something you would be likely to come across when looting the local grocery store or pharmacy, and flip up irons for backup when the batteries are no more.
And everyone needs a laser on every gun. That way even your kids can shoot a zombie in the head.

Anyone seen any zombies yet? I'm looking forward to the apocalypse.
Here zombie zombie zombie... Look at the red light.
Would it blind a zombie if he looks into my laser? Hmmmm.
 
Again, it doesn't matter how many thousands of rounds you have after a 22LR fails to stop.

Again, getting shot through the crossword puzzle part of the brain doesn't necessarily kill you, viz Gabrielle Giffords:
2861532185.jpg

You need to do extensive damage to the brain with every shot. 22LR simply doesn't have the energy. Fragmenting 5.56x45 is pretty much minimum.
 
I'm with Misanthropist on this one, 5.56 all the way. Yes, maybe .22lr is lighter, smaller and you can carry more, but if some of your hits require a second shot to finish the job, while a mob of zombies are running at you? Not going to cut it.

5.56 has worked on all the zombies I've used it on, so I'll stick with it.

Back to the original question, best optic, I'm going for an Aimpoint or EOtech RDS (or smaller) and spare batteries. Don't need magnification, just need it to be fast and light.
 
Zombie skulls are mushy on all but the freshest ones. I'd rather avoid attracting more zombies to the fray, with the noise of a centrefire round, and thereby avoid further confrontation. Will a .223 serve you better in a massed attack? Probably. But you're going to be burning through your limited ammo in such a scenario, in any case. And attracting still more attention while doing it. Its a slippery, downward slope from there. The key is to avoid putting yourself in that bind in the first place.
 
Best optic is gonna be a dot sight, something fast, accurate enough and easy enough for anyone to use. 5.56 perfect since it will engage a target farther than 22lr since the real threat in a zombie apocalypse is all the other gun toting nuts.
 
Dirt Road said:
5.56 perfect since it will engage a target farther than 22lr since the real threat in a zombie apocalypse is all the other gun toting nuts.
Click to expand...

While I would agree that in most apocalypse scenarios, other humans are the principal threat, this doesn't appear to hold as true for the zombie apocalypse. When a human does turn out to be the threat, it tends to occur at very close range. And that's the place for a sidearm.
 
heavy metal said:
I think it is fair to say that both rounds are proven human killers therefore zombie killers. I think there has to be a consensus on what part of the zombie brain needs to be destroyed before assuming that human brains are more sensitive. If we were to go off of what books and movies tell us (what else really do we have to go on :)) a zombie can be destroyed by a blade to the brain.

medium to close range the round will penetrate the skull and destroy the brain, granted there will be the odd need for a double tap, a need that will lessen the closer you get. With that, what is simpler than double tapping with a .22? there is no need to take a zombie at long ranges, if it is that far, let it go.

the main selling feature with the .22 is the amount of ammo that one can carry, this really isn't being given enough credibility. Like i've said before, ammo won't last forever and the amount of .22 that can be carried/stored will be more than any other round period. Also the noise is a major benefit, a 223 is loud and will alert zombies for miles, a .22 very much less so.

i saw a .17 hmr post....which may indeed be the perfect round....small as the .22 with much more penetrating power...i do like that idea
Click to expand...

.22lr is not a proven RELIABLE killer.

It is a proven UNRELIABLE killer.

It is therefore a very poor choice.
 
misanthropist said:
.22lr is not a proven RELIABLE killer. It is a proven UNRELIABLE killer. It is therefore a very poor choice.
Click to expand...

A "reliable" killer of what, exactly? Living, breathing humans? By that measure, there are reams of evidence to suggest that the .223 is not a "reliable" manstopper either.
 
CV32 said:
A "reliable" killer of what, exactly? Living, breathing humans? By that measure, there are reams of evidence to suggest that the .223 is not a "reliable" manstopper either.
Click to expand...

Consider for a moment that we are applying human biology to killing zombies...therefore only living, breathing, humans who have been shot IN THE HEAD count.

I don't know what percentage of people you think survive .223 head shots, but I assure you it's fairly small.

Almost everyone shot who gets shot in the head with a 5.56 round immediately has more important things to do than continue breathing. Popular options, I believe, include collapsing, twitching, and emitting a surprisingly pinkish, foamy looking fluid from the head. That is not to say that absolutely everyone who gets shot in the head with a .223 takes up the full-time, demanding hobby of lying on the ground and slowly cooling (or in some cases warming) to the ambient temperature, but if you think that the percentage of people who get instantly turned off of remaining ambulatory and aware is the same among people shot in the head with a .22 and people shot in the head with a 5.56 I would suggest that you are not 100% up on your terminal ballistics research.

The issues 5.56 has relate more to marginal shot placement than ineffective terminal performance when shot placement is correct. And considering that we will all stipulate that only head shots count when it comes to zombies, we have effectively stipulated that shot placement is relatively good.

The .223/5.56 should therefore be highly effective. And certainly much more effective than a .22. If you feel that the .223 is possibly not enough...then there is ABSOLUTELY no argument for the .22lr.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom