The Pocket Sized Zombie Survival Kit!

It's coming. Someday soon, it will happen. The government and media have hushed up the outbreaks, but word has still leaked out. We've heard whispers about strange plagues, random bite attacks, and the restless dead. There have been a few incidents in isolated rural areas, easily contained. A handful of urban incidents, with all of the eye witnesses mysteriously vanished. You have certainly heard about the terrorist attack in a small town in Arizona, where the terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb, but did you know this bomb was actually launched by an Air Force bomber? What could be so dangerous that the government would destroy thousands of it's own citizens as collateral damage?

Some of us have our eyes and ears open to the truth. We know what's really going on, and we know that someday soon, it will come. It has many names. Doomsday. Armageddon. Z-Day. The Zombie Apocalypse.

Are you prepared?

Not everyone has the time and resources to buy a mountaintop fortress stocked with three years worth of canned goods. In this instructable, I will show you how to assemble a small kit that can be carried with you at all times, and make you better prepared to survive the inevitable Zombie War.

***UPDATE 5/4/10:  As of now, if you post a picture of yourself done up in zombie garb and makeup in the comments section, I'll send you a DIY patch!  Make sure you're holding something with your user name on it, so I know it's really you!***

Here is the list of items you will need for your Zombie Survival kit:

1 Small multitool
1 Roll of dental floss
3 Sewing needles
1 Mini-Bic Lighter
30 Ibuprofen
14 Multivitamins
1 Tube antibiotic ointment
3 Firecrackers
9 1.5v button cells
12 Inches of sturdy copper wire
1 White Superbright LED
10 Caffeine pills
1 Cyanide capsule
1 List of instructions - more on this later

Put everything except the multitool in an altoids tin. It will just barely close, so tape it up with duct tape to finish the job. The multitool stays out of the tin, since you will certainly find it useful between now and Z-Day.

Since you can't carry a toolbox in your pocket, carrying a good quality multitool will give you quick access to many of the tools you might need. The one in the picture below is my current multitool, but I imagine one of those fancy Leatherman Squirts would be better (hint hint!). This tool gives you quick access to a knife, pliers, a small saw, bottle opener (which can be used to pry open things other than bottles) and both flat and phillips screwdrivers.

In a Zombie survival situation, there is no end to what you could use a multitool for, but here is a short list of ideas:

- Opening canned food
- Building other, larger tools
- Cutting branches to use for weapons or tools
- Sharpening things to a point
- Opening electronics equipment to repurpose their components
- Attached to the end of a sturdy stick, it could be a hammer or a club

This is your most important and versatile tool. Make sure you have it with you at all times.

Use floss, not tape. It is made from woven threads and is much more sturdy than the plastic tape. Dental floss is another very useful and versatile item that can be used for a variety of purposes:

- Suture
- Sewing together ripped clothing (this could be important if you're caught outdoors in bad weather)
- Tying a rock to the end of a stick (for a simple hammer or club)
- Tourniquet

Sutures and tourniquets would obviously be for normal wounds, not bite wounds. If you've been bitten by a Zombie, you have a much more serious problem on your hands.

Wrap the dental floss around the lighter, and secure it with a piece of medical tape.

A needle will mainly be used for sewing clothing and stitches. If you're suturing a wound, make sure you sterilize the needle with fire from your lighter, and use your antibiotic ointment on the wound afterwords.

I agonized over this one for a while. Matches or lighter? Matches have no moving parts to break, but a lighter will get many more uses. I finally decided on a mini-sized Bic lighter, for better pocket sizedness. Not only will you get more uses, but unlike matches, after a lighter dries off it will still work just fine.

Bic lighters are very sturdy, not just the casing but the hardware as well, and once you run out of fuel you can still extract the flint and the steel roller to make sparks. In most Zombie situations fire is a bad thing. It draws attention to you, and a burning zombie doesn't stop moving, it just lights your shelter on fire. Still there are a number of uses you can put the lighter to:

- Lighting a fire to attract the attention of rescuers
- Sterilizing surgical equipment
- Lighting your firecrackers
- Lighting a fire for warmth or cooking

I cannot stress strongly enough not to ever try and burn a zombie! In the Kansas City zombie outbreak of 1974, a group of soldiers tried to use flamethrowers on the undead. At the end of the day all the zombies were rounded up and killed, but not before they burned down several blocks of suburban housing.

Chances are that at some point during the undead holocaust, you will be in pain. It could be from a wound, a strained muscle, or simple fatigue. You'll want to reduce the pain to keep yourself moving and keep your head clear. However, you definitely won't want to be taking anything stronger that ibuprofen, as that could numb your wits and make you less wary of the constant threat from the undead horde waiting just outside the door.

Also, ibuprofen doubles as a fever reducer should you or someone in your party end up with a non-zombie related infection or sickness.

In the event of a long term siege, you may not have enough food to hold out for long. Thankfully, the human body can survive for around a month without any food at all. While the multivitamins don't contain much in the way of calories, they will at least provide your body with some nutrients to keep it going and as healthy as possible in such adverse conditions.

A small first aid kit sized tube of Neosporin or the generic equivalent will help with the healing and prevention of infection in non-bite wounds. The last thing you need after you've successfully fought your way through a horde of ravenous ghouls is to find the cut you got on your leg from scaling a chain link fence has turned gangrenous. Self-amputation won't be easy, and a one-legged man will be an easy target for even the slowest of shambling undead.

Explosions aren't particularly effective against zombies, but they do have one important effect on them: distraction. Zombies are attracted by movement, sound, and the smell of live flesh. You might attach a few extra inches of fuse to the firecrackers to give you some extra time, and then throw one down a different path than the one you're taking, to hopefully distract them for a vital few seconds.

If you find that you need to make a break from your stronghold, you could throw a firecracker out of one side of the building, and when the horde moves off after the sound, escape through the other side. During the so called "Virginia Farmhouse" incident a few years ago, a group of the living escaped from a mob of zombies using this exact tactic.

Carrying your own batteries could be very useful. If you find yourself needing to listen to a radio or power a flashlight, while these small batteries won't last as long as full sized batteries, they might give you the few minutes of light or information that mean the difference between life and death.

This is another all-purpose tool that could be very useful in a pinch. It could be used in conjunction with the button cells to connect them to the battery leads of whatever you're trying to power. It could be used to wire shut a latch for a few extra moments of escape time. If it is stiff enough and you have no other options (and very good aim), it could even be driven through the eye of a zombie into its brain.

If you need just enough light to read the labels on a can of food or find your way through a pitch black basement, simply grab a couple of the button cells and this LED and pinch them between the leads. It won't make much light, but it might be just enough to see if the pill bottle you're grabbing from the deserted pharmacy contains antibiotics or viagra.

When you're running for your life or trying to stay awake on your watch, a little caffeine might just be enough to keep you alert and moving. If you do use these though, keep in mind that too many will make you sick, and if you keep yourself moving on nothing but caffeine, you will eventually crash, and crash hard.

This is the most important part. As the old adage goes, knowledge is power, and this simple sheet of paper could be your brain's extra battery. It contains step by step instructions for securing your stronghold against the undead, and surviving in the face of the zombie apocalypse.

Print this sheet out, one page on each side of a piece of paper. If you can, laminate it. Study it, learn it, know it, and keep it close! At the first sign of an outbreak, begin your preparations!

This is your weapon of very last resort. When all else fails and you're holed up with no hope of escape or rescue, you will at the very least be able to deprive the ever growing undead horde of another recruit. Where you get a cyanide capsule is beyond me, I don't really have one, or actually recommend carrying one in your pocket next to a lighter, several batteries and some small explosives.

No pocket sized packet of tools will help you if you cannot think on your feet and improvise. You cannot fit an effective weapon against the undead such as an AK-47 or a good, solid baseball bat in your pocket. You must also be mentally prepared to deal with the horror of your friends, family, and neighbors rising from the dead, intent on feasting upon your flesh.

You must be conscious and aware of the one most effective weapon against the undead horde, the one thing that you have and they don't--your brain.

With your brain you can turn a lamp into a bludgeon, a couch into a barricade, a rock into a hammer, or a bookshelf into a pile of boards and screws to secure an entrance. The living dead don't have this ability. All they have is superior numbers, a total lack of fatigue, and their insatiable hunger.

When the dead walk, nothing can completely prepare you for the shock of seeing your beloved wife or best friend covered in blood and shambling towards you, arms outstretched, their black and rotting lips pulled back from their teeth as the horrible moan issues from their dead lungs. The only advice I can give you for this situation is to be aware that once they are risen, though they may look like someone you knew, that person is gone and all that remains is a terrible creature that must be stopped! Don't let fond memories sway you. Simply destroy this simulacrum of your loved one and mourn them later, as they are already dead.

Thank you for your time, and best of luck surviving Z-Day! I would also like to thank Max Brooks for his books, George Romero for his movies, Simon Pegg for being hilarious, www.sci-toys.com for the home made radio idea, and my big brother for letting me watch horror movies when I was little. Extra special thanks to my girlfriend for the last minute zombie makeup!

If you enjoyed my little instructable, please take a moment to leave a comment and a rating. Let me know what you thought about the idea, my writing, etc. What do you think about the items I included? Would you have left anything out, or included something different?


***UPDATE 5/4/10:  As of now, if you post a picture of yourself done up in zombie garb and makeup in the comments section, I'll send you a DIY patch!  Make sure you're holding something with your user name on it, so I know it's really you!***