Skills you should learn for Zombie Survival

Basic Wilderness Survival skills 

You might want to consider taking a wilderness survival course. Even if you live in an urban environment, these skills will come in handy during the zombie apocalypse. Specific skills include how to build a fire, How to build a shelter, How to Snare Dinner in the Wild (also a good skill to capture and exterminate Zombies) and How to Avoid Hypothermia. Knowing how to kill zombies is useless if you die of starvation or exposure. 

First Aid and Medical skills

It will be a crazy time and people will get hurt. I’m not talking about treating zombie bites here. Those people are doomed. It’s all of the other wounds and injuries that will need treating, so know how to treat them! Everything from cuts, sprains and broken bones, to bullet wounds and third degree burns. Learn how to dress a wound, make a splint, stop bleeding and how to treat a burn. Learn CPR. Once you’ve mastered all of that, you may want to learn some more advanced procedures. Because if you group up with other survivors, it doesn’t matter how much of an asshole you are*, if you can remove a bullet and suture the wound, they will keep you around and keep you safe.

Combat and Self-Defense

There are two types of people you will need to defend yourself from: Dead ones that want to eat you and alive ones that want to take things from you. Or are possibly just jerks. Either way, you’ll want to know how to defend yourself from both types. Consider taking some self-defense classes, or perhaps a martial art or two. Learn how to handle a firearm without blowing off an appendage.

Other skills you may want to consider

Construction - For building a shelter and barricading doors and windows. It would suck to die in your sleep because of a poorly barricaded door.

Welding - Welding can be also be used in barricading and shelter construction. It can also be used to create zombie traps and other such booby-traps. 

Electrical repair - If your group has a means of distance communication (walkie talkies, cb radio, etc), you will want someone around who can fix it if it breaks. You can’t just go out an buy new ones, you know.

Sewing - Again, you can’t just go out and buy new clothes every time something gets worn or rips. There will probably lots to be looted and scavenged in early days, but that wont last forever.


Did I miss anything? What skills do you think will be most important for surviving the zombie apocalypse?

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*Don’t be an asshole. (This is a good life rule in general)

Ten Silly Things

Sometimes, I get the urge to learn something silly and pretty useless. Usually, I just forget about it and move on, but no more. I've made a list, and I'm going to start checking things off.

10 Silly Things I'm Going to Learn to Do

1. One Awesome card trick
2. One easy magic trick
3. One magic trick that's a little bit harder
4. To Juggle with 3 Balls
5. How to Whistle using my hands (aka hand cooing)
6. Five origami things (Origami shapes? I don't know how to word this. You know what I'm talking about, right?)
7. Perfect the coin walk
8. How to Spin a Pen
9. Make three different Balloon Animals
10. To be able to sing along with the Song One Week by Barenaked Ladies (I know all the words, but do you think I can keep up? No, I can not. It drives me crazy)

Why Would I want to learn these so-called useless skills? First and foremost, for fun. Life is fun, and useless skills make it more fun. Also, a little bit to show off. Have you ever been shown an awesome card trick? Like, a really awesome one that you have no idea how it worked (one time, in high school, this guy showed me this card trick, where the cards he was looking for kept appearing under my hand. Which was flat down on the table...I still think there may have been some sort of sorcery involved)? That person, showing the trick, in that moment, is the coolest person in the room. To me at least. Maybe I'm just easily impressed. Whatever. Anyway, I want people to think I'm cool, or at least kind of interesting. And finally, every skill, useless or not, can help you in other areas of your life. A lot of my silly things will improve my hand/eye coordination, something that I have little of. Ta-da! A good reason to learn to juggle. For more on this, check out Why Useless Skills Matter at Happenchance.

Is there something you've always wanted to learn, but haven't because you thought it was useless? Or, do you have any "useless" skills perfected already?