Welcome to Gaia! ::

What would you do for the short term survival? Talking from day one up to a year into the outbreak.

you will not be able to avoid all contact especially as you plan to plan to stay withing a"civilized city'

I am on the opinion that majority of the zeds will follow their prey aka living humans from the big cities as all the living flee them. There will still be high numbers but not giant masses.

The shopping center will have been the first hit in the loot. You are best off with small mom and pop shops. Less costumers and less zeds, and less people who know of them thus less looting.

A gun shot an un-silenced one will attrack zeds from all the hearing radius. Then if the zed moan it will attract more and etc.

Well, I think you would only get that if it was a situation with a large group of zeds attacking without warning. Or a very aggressive strain.

I feel retarded for posting up that plan cuz everything I just read makes so much more sense X__X

Luckily I have a friend out there who's family owns a hunting lodge. They store alot of food for costumers as well as water. Also since it is a hunting lodge they conveniantly have alot of guns and sharpshooters. My friend is also a knife inthusiast for melee weapons. All that put together out in a more rural area gives me enough time to equip a vehicle and to pre-arm myself so that when suplies run low I'll be able to slip into town checking appartments, stores, and gas stations for foods that wont go bad easily, and slip back away from society once more until I need more supplies.

That is true but honestly I had thought of those planings long ago. The only true risk is going to the lodge in the first place, but as I said before this is a more rural area and we would notice the news reports from larger cities at least a week before it reached our area. As for fortification, the lodge has an upper balcony type platform with removable stairs (obviously no longer needed) these stairs would be turned into more basic pieces of wood that would be used to board up every window 2 times over. The balcony would serve as a way to minimize the number of infected near the household and is at a hight where it could reach the roof ( if needed) as well as being safe to jump off of. This would serve as an escape route from an imidiate threat within the living area. If infected in large numbers were to assemble and fall in line with our lodge than we could use the preprepared transport as a form of retreat.

Don't forget they can tip over your car.

Me well it depends. How many zombies are we talking about? Are we talking about "Night of the liveing dead" amount which I think wasen't much like mybe about ten. I fell asleep during the movie so I don't really know. Are we talking about "Resident Evil 2 and 3" amount of zombies is a whole town. Or "High School Of The Dead" amount which is the entire world.

I'd gather what supplires I can. My dad has a work shop in the basement hich has all the wood thats needed to board up the house, along with some makeshift weapons, such as a spear made out of a kitchen knife, a broom handle, and some rope can make one. It might not be very good but better than nothing. My dad also made wooden swords for christmas one year so we have some weapons (I don't know about durablitiy but he says there about as strong as the one in some of the martial arts schools he goes to), everyone in my family aside form one person has done some martail arts, so weve got basic hand-to-hand. Food would have to be bought though.