Terminal Defense Position: Pertek Castle

I do my best to keep track of what is going on in the world - its very important to understand our world and the events shaping it. I feel this is doubly important when someone is trying to write a story that includes global level events. If you don't understand the impact of that crop failure on a nation thousands of miles away your world begins to fray. You can't have an army destroy every food source available in its march to conquer the world without SOMEONE going hungry. Food comes and goes somewhere so you need to understand it.

I was reading up on what the Islamic State was doing in attacking a city near the Syrian border with Turkey and I discovered a very fascinating location for a Terminal Defense Position. Following the river just west of the city of Kobane, I followed the river into the mountains of Turkey. Once there I noticed an island with an old fortress on it. The fortress of Pertek.

Given its location, the island probably has more history hidden on it than any writer would dream of making up. Sitting smack in the mountains of Eurasia this sort of place is a wonder unto itself.

Limited Approach:
This is an island located in a lake surrounded by mountains. Can't argue against deep water with steep cliff approaches as benefits. However - in a global wipe out of humanity by zombies being in the connecting land between most major population centers of the planet might be a big downer.

Length of Stay Before Resupply:
Across the lake is ample farmland. If you prepare for it and bring solar panels it is on a similar parallel to my current one making solar electricity very viable. These two supply items would make the stay work quite well.

Supplies:
Farms will work decently for a long while, and being a freshwater lake it is likely to have some decent fishing. However mineral and technical resources are limited in the area - and it won't be an easy trek out of the mountain country to replace things.

This place is a defensible spot with food sources nearby. There is ample sunlight and fresh water would be readily available - as long as no contamination comes from upriver. I think this local with its food nearby makes a solid place to hang out in the apocalypse of undead.

Also - do a Google image search for this area. It is absolutely beautiful. All the good pictures I felt were copyrighted and I didn't want to deal with that issue today.

Last Night Was Hell

I don't know how the rest of you spent your night, but mine was spent in utter hell. Pure, unfettered, putrid, horrifying hell.

No, I did spend my night stuck watching Star Trek V or videos of Jar-Jar Binks. I had a night of one long

continuing nightmare about zombies. Hour after painful hour, of undead mayhem.

When these nights occur - which are thankfully few and far between, my mind gets stuck in a groove. I will enter a dream sequence that I know is a dream - but I am so afraid of zombies it overpowers my ability to Lucid dream. What I can do, is wake myself up. So my night is spent in the dream world running in terror, sometimes dying, mostly waiting with apprehension and discomfort wondering why this dream won't stop.

How often do we have dreams we want to continue that just won't? No one can say they have not woken up and yearned to go back and finish what their dream had going on for them. Does it work? Hardly ever! Your mind is a jerk who snatches away that joyous endeavor like a bully steals your lunch money.

On an aside - having grown up poor and generally getting free lunch - I have no idea what it is like to have my lunch money stolen. Poverty for the win! ....Shit...

Getting back to my main topic here - my mental torture. So I spend these nights balancing between two bad situations. If I stay away I will be even more exhausted the next day. I risk having a migraine all day, being unable to drive safely, or not being able to enjoy my day because I am spending it rubbing my eyes and trying not to cry at the knots in my back. If I go back to sleep unknown horrors await me. I have been eaten,  chased and trapped with the grim horde battering their way in. I have witnessed thousands attacked and turned by the undead. No seriously - thousands of people. Many times they are people I care about - or their arch-type.

The struggle goes on and on. Fall asleep - maybe it will be different. Wake up because it was no different. Feel so very tired. Let myself close my eyes - yup - more undead there. Open my eyes... You get the idea. It is like being bombarded with your greatest fear both awake and asleep.

That is what is even more horrible about it. Because I get so tired after a night of this - my brain finds it harder and harder to separate the reality from the dream. Even more so when the dream world uses real world places I know to torture me. I wake up and I begin to fear going back to sleep. Every little noise is a zombie sneaking towards trying to eat me or my family. You know how much I freak out knowing my daughter would have to face that? It makes me want to install those awesome steel window covers from "I am Legend". Not sure how one we even get those - it must be a custom iron working job.

So yes, today I am tired, I am exhausted, and I am left with another night of tortured dreams filled with undead attacks. I can only hope that the paranoia that is left behind is not too debilitating today and I can not freak out at every sound that happens to occur near me.

Terminal Defense Position: The Channel Islands

Since my last entry discussed some of the concerns a Zombie-apocalypse survivor needs to keep in mind when selecting a location, I decide I should start picking some out that I think would make for interesting analyses. Lets face it, after playing a few rounds with the game "Plague Inc." almost anyone would want to find a nice secluded spot to live when the Zombies come. Or in this case - the vastly over-powered mutating sentient disease intent on wiping out humanity.

One can only hope that Plague Inc. gives me a free copy of the app for plugging them here (please? I need to scare myself more often?)

Anyways, my location for today's analysis is going to be the Channel Island off the California coast. Here is a map in case you are unsure where they are. that city in the top right corner of the Map is the Ventura/Oxnard region just outside of Los Angeles. This location will include the caveat that I have not spent any time on the islands - I have only looked longingly at them from the coast when I spend time in Ventura. This location speaks to me on a number of different wavelengths, so lets look at each of the areas of concern and how this location stacks up.

Limited Approach
These islands are nice in that they are close to shore, but out of range of most swimmers. The first small island is almost 20 miles off shore - I know I can't swim that far as of today. (Note to self, begin swimming training for endurance) The island each have few locations that you can just get onto the island - their coasts are rocky - this will help provide less area to patrol and keep possibly infected people off-shore under quarantine. Can't beat that. However - this place is within an hour travel of the metropolitan area of Los Angeles. The city proper has almost 3.9 million residents, and the Metro area is closing in on 20 million inhabitants making it one of the largest city centers on the planet. Score: 8/10

Length of Stay before Re-Supply
This one is tricky. If you have time to prep the location - which you cannot in this case because I guess people get angry if you modify a national park- these locations can be very long-term inhabitable. Fishing is ample around the islands, and there seems to be enough rain to keep the place green most of the year, however this island is along the dividing line of the California heat and the more common cooler rainier climate of the northern half of the state. With the right seed crops in addition to local wildlife, and a way to store large amounts of water, this island could be a great place to spend your time. Also, though you can't see it on the smaller map above - directly north of the eastern peninsula of the island are active oil derricks. That's right - you have a pre-tapped supply of oil - if you know how to not blow yourself up operating an oil derrick. Score: 10/10

Supplies
This location could be self-sustaining if properly managed - however a fair amount of technical expertise is needed. Who here can farm? How much needs to be planted to feed a single/multiple persons? Who can operate an oil derrick? Can you fish without a fancy pole or net? Also, the previous blog entry mentioned that whole "Tons and tons of explosives" that would be dropped to stop the advance of the Zombie horde. Does anyone reading this that the military would think twice about nuking an LA with Zombie Justin Beiber eating his fans? Hell. No. (a Google image search was too revolting to include here.) I wouldn't stop myself. So this location could be partly irradiated, and any supplied you would have tried scavenging while fighting off the millions of undead in LA will be a melted pile of slag. Your only hope is that the mountains shielded Ventura and Oxnard - lots of hippies with Solar panels, and marina's with nice boats. Score: 6/10

Available Skill Sets
This one will take some planning. Good news is that California has Rocket scientists - so no shortage of mad-scientist types can be found near the Channel Islands - they do Rocket testing there. Additionally, the Naval Engineers (Sea Bees) are located at the naval base at Point Mugu - on the south side of Oxnard. Make that another notch for very well armed construction and trade skills. In fact - if you can't make a pretty hospitable location work when you have both rockets scientists and a full armed construction force you are really going to have to reconsider your plan of action for the apocalypse.  Score: 11/10

Final Score
Because of the relative ease of sustaining this area, and the availability of both farm and technical skill sets, but its proximity to a major ZBA - I would give the Channel Islands a total score of 35/40. This location could sustain a group of people for an extended period of time, in relative ease with its moderate climate conditions, proximity to technical and physical resources and a more secure location than most people can find on land. Well done California, well done.

Terminal Defensive Positions

I am pretty sure my family has been involved, in some form or another, in most every major conflict in the last 1000 years of Western European history. No - I can't confirm all of that - that is the beauty of "anecdotal" history. Needless to say though, of all the generations currently alive - all of them have served in the military. At least one member of the family has found their way into the defense of the country we call home. Part of the reason this matters to me - is because all of us are obsessed with tactics and strategy. My love of strategy also bleeds over into my fear of the undead.

In the past I have written about my need to know the escape routes of places I am at, or think of how I can turn said locations into an easily defensible position. This is important to me - in some part of my mind I need to know what sort of defensive strategy I should have in place for where I am at a given moment. Handy? not most of the time, but it is in that one in a million time when that sort of information needs to be understood. 

This entry will discuss the importance of Terminal Defense Positions. These are locations that have a few required ratings that a person should take into consideration, to determine how long you should stay there, and what sort of places really are the best places to escape to in case of zombie outbreak.

1. Limited Approach. How limited are the access points for the undead to reach you. Are you trying to hide in a green house? (That is an Epic Fail by the way) Are you just hanging out in your basement/attic? (Another possible group of FAIL) Are you using one of these?

Yes, that is one freaking epic-ally hard to approach fortress (Built in Yemen according to the Google Image search that found it). While this limited approach appears, well, pretty awesome, it does suggest utter failure in the next category.

2. Length of Stay before Re-Supply. While that Yemeni fortress above is a great place to draw a proverbial "line in the sand", it probably doesn't have a natural spring of fresh water inside of it. That rock looks pretty dry. Probably doesn't have access to fuel - either wood, oil, gas, or anything else. While it would be perfect for a solar installation (power for the place and shade for you is a good idea) lugging solar panels around in the apocalypse is not going to be an option here.

3. Supplies. How difficult is it to manage long-term in that location. Can you supply yourself food, fresh water, and fuel supplies? Materials to rebuild equipment that breaks? I do not consider non-replenishing scavenging here. The idea that you can "scavenge forever" is faulty - and fails to take in the assumption that there are million of tons of high-grade explosives and nuclear weapons that will be used in a Zombie Apocalypse. 

That whole "you need two keys and some magic codes from that briefcase by the president..." goes out the window really fast when a rural base commander see a nearby town overrun with undead coming at his soldiers, and he gets a technician to jury rig an override to that fancy trigger gizmo inside of it. Nuclear weapons need two things - fissionable materials and a really big *bang* surrounding it to get it to become unstable. every other part is just to help or control the reaction when it prepares to go off. Urban centers will be ravaged by fires, nuclear and traditional explosions and the thousands of people living in that town that panic and strip the place bare before you get to it. Scavenging will not be a good fall back plan. 

4. Available Skill Set. Some people are more valuable than others to save - sorry Geek Squad. Unless you can toss together a Tesla Coil or any other technical feasible device other than an Ipod we don't need you. I will not have to worry about my IP Address in the Apocalypse. Civil engineers, Contractors, Electricians, Pipe Fitters, Masons... Hell with it - just find every tradesmen you can tie up and toss in whatever vehicle you have around. Ignore doctors, get the Nurse Practitioners first - they do a lot of the real work anyways. 

This is a perfect time to be friends with a Union Representative because chances are he knows some of the best in these trades. Please don't discuss Union vs. non-Union here - Unions are more connected typically than non union and we need that knowledge fast. You don't have time to take applications and do background checks.

Additionally, it is handy to know that crazy, food hoarding gun enthusiast down the street - that I assume you made sure to invite to every fun event at your home you could get away with over the past few years. If he is hoarding Twinkies you don't have to be his friend - we want the people that are hoarding raw grains and salts for curing the meat they hunt or fish themselves. That family - strange as you may think they are, will have what you need. You better have been helping them out otherwise they might just shoot you on sight.

These four values should be used to evaluate any location that you want to sit down in and ride out the hoard of undead wiping out all those people you didn't really like anyways. Next week - we will begin going over locations that are best suited for a long term survival of you and your family (or people you saved instead of your horrible, horrible, insane family that were the first to be turned).  

Bad news - California is actually, AGAIN, one of the best places to be for this sort of event - if you can avoid the initial problem of that state having more undead than any other on the continent. Goddamn hippies did that on purpose didn't they?