Then this radio host decides to massively over simplify things. He asks the boy if he had to choose right now, would he pick the girl or the Corps and I found myself yelling at the radio for this kid to man up and pick the Corps.  After all, she had been giving him lines like “Oh, it’ll be four years before we’ll see each other again.”

I mean, what the hell? Here they finally admit feelings for each other and she is already making excuses for something that is a year away from happening?

Now like I said, I was yelling for this kid to say to join the Corps. Not because I hold any particular love for Marines. They serve their purpose just as we in the Army serve ours. But here is the thing. I had a lot of feelings for a lot of different women. I’ve had ones that I care deeply about say they would refuse to talk to me if I joined the military. I’ve had one leave me eight months before a deployment because she was worried that when the time came I would leave her.

But there is a bond that I have made with my soldiers, with those that I’ve served with, that goes deeper than anything I have ever had with a woman. Too often, I’ve seen good women leave their men, but the friendships built haven’t faded. I’ve seen friends want to kill theselves over a woman, but stop because of a fellow soldier.

But this isn’t even the main direction that I wanted to take this. Instead, I wanted to talk about the experience. Never be afriad of doing something today because of how you will feel tomorrow. Life is far too short, and what we experience shapes our perception, and in turn, our very lives.

After all, there is a reason why the older generation always wins in practical joke wars. Because they’ve done it before. They’ve been there. And even if they haven’t, they’ve been through something similar and can relate.

So just because it may not last, just because it may hurt, do not hold back. Life is for the living. It needs to be lived. And so I leave you with a rather appropriate, if somewhat overused, quote.

Every man dies. Not every man truely lives.

Now most of my soldiers are only looking forward to two things when they get back. Beer and women. And I don’t really blame them for that. Those thoughts have been with me for the past year. But I also can’t help but think that I’m leaving what will always be a large part of my life.

I joined the Army back in August of 2006. By February of 2007 I was in Iraq for my first tour. In the past three years, I have spent two in this country. Now I’m not saying that I won’t end up in Afghanistan at some point in the near future, but I’m relatively sure that I’m done with this country. And in any other deployment that I may do, I will not be there as a combat soldier. No matter what else I go on to do after this, there will always be those two years of 2007 and 2009 that I spent in Iraq.

What I have experianced and learned here will carry on in me. What I have done will echo in my thoughts. Despite what history and people say or think, I know what I did. I know what I accomplished. No one can take this away from me.

It’s odd to look back on your life with something like that. To look back and see that you started your adult life, that you formed your true personallity, in a place like this. As I finish up my last year, I feel a combination of emotions. I feel both excitement about getting to come home, and disappointment that I will never again do anything like this.

Homecomings are always like this. There is always that trepidation as we get ready to return to the “normal” life of society. While it is something that I greatly look forward to, it is also an event that I fear.

Why? Because I am used to life in Iraq. I am used to this feeling. To the bonds that have been developed. While I know that there is very little that can break those bonds, I also know that the feeling will never again be what it is now.

This is a chapter in my life where the writing has stopped. It is finished and will only exsist again as images as I re-read the memories of those two years. Though my book is hopefully far from over, this chapter has finished and the time to turn the page is at hand.

But what does that mean to be free from? Over four hundred years ago, a group of German students and parishioners fought to be free from the Catholic Church. Over two hundred years ago, a group of colonists fought to be free from England. Over a hundred years ago, we fought to be free from slavery. Today, we fight to be free from. Always from.

But therein lays the problem, ladies and gentlemen. The more we fight to be free from, the more we are enslaved. We work hard at our jobs to be free from poverty, and yet the more we make and the further from poverty we get, the more we realize we don’t have. The more we think we need.

We send our kids to school, go back to school ourselves, study, and read to free ourselves from ignorance. Yet, for everything we learn, there is ten more things that we don’t know. We then need to learn more and more and more just to stay free from ignorance.

More and more we fight. More and more we struggle. More and more we work. All to try and stay free from something. To try and stay ahead so that we can say we are free from it. And the more we fight to be free from, the more we find enslaving us.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are some things that it is good to fight to be free from. It is important to be free from a master. It is important to be free from sin and fear. These are a few key things that it is important to be free from. But again, the more we focus on being free from, the more we become trapped.

Friends, I stand up here today to tell you that this should no longer be our focus. Our concerns. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again. In three days, we saw the love and grace of God appear on this planet. In three days, sin, fear of damnation, fear of death, those great enslavers of our souls, were destroyed and we were free from them. Free from them forever.

In three days, we were free from everything that truly held us. That truly chained us. Completely free from our greatest capturers. There is no other thing present that we need to be free from. We are free from my friends. The time to keep fighting is over.

Instead, I want to stand up here and focus on a new type of freedom.

There once was a man who was born in a great country. Now this was a while ago, back before tolerance was all the rage and we looked past what a person was and focused more on who they were. Well, this man happened to be born into the wrong religion.

Well, this man grew up. All his life, he was looked down on for his faith. He sought to be free of that faith. And so this man changed his name and worked for the government. This didn’t really bring him any joy though. It was merely a job. Every one still knew what he was. His employers and coworkers still looked down on him. His own religion looked down on him for his government job.

He had spent most of his life struggling to be free from. Free from what he was. Free from the way people looked at him. It may seem like a hard concept to understand, but it’s not really that big of a stretch of the imagination. I mean, let’s look at ourselves for a moment.

Times have been hard all over. We want to try and make a better life for ourselves. It’s been tough. For some of us, we’ve been working since we got out of high school. There was no need to go college. And yet, when things get tight in the economy, we are the first ones let go. Everyone wants that college grad. So we had to fight and struggle to go back and get some type of degree to free ourselves from the stigma of not having a degree.

Being a Christian is hard. We try so hard to be accepting of other faiths. Christmas becomes the holidays. Easter is just a spring celebration. Being Lutheran is especially tough because we are the group that broke away from the Catholic Church, so we feel the need to not become like what we once protested. We don’t want to be seen as a controlling, authoritative faith. We struggle to be free from an image.

We work so hard to be free from that image that we start to lose sight of the message. We lose sight of why we are Christian. Church merely becomes a Sunday ritual. We come in the doors and we smile and shake hands. We sit down and sing the hymns and you listen to me talk. Then we go outside, have our coffee and cookies, get in our cars, and go home. The week starts, and we go back to our quiet faith because after all, we have to stay free from an image.

Now don’t worry. I’m not mad about this. I understand. I have done the same thing. It is a natural response. After all, if we don’t fight to stay free from that image, we quickly get labeled as fanatics. There is very little room in our society for middle ground. We have to be one or the other. To publically talk about our faith is to have to subscribe to what the evangelists on T.V. say we should do.

So we live our spiritual lives in here on Sunday, and come Monday, we change our names and go to work. All to be free from.

Now I want to go back to our government worker. Some of you have probably guessed who it was. Saul, the Jewish man who worked for the Roman government and become the Apostle Paul.

Now there were two miracles involved when Paul lost and regained his sight. First there was the obvious of him going blind and the power of God and Christ healing him. The second miracle is the more amazing of the two, however. That was the miracle of his freedom.

Now for those of you who are students of history may be thinking “What freedom?” After all, his becoming a Christian put him in a smaller and more outcast community in the Roman Empire than he was as a Jew. He spent his life trying to be free of the stigma of being Jewish and he was freed into a religion that was looked down on by everyone at the time?

But the freedom that Paul attained the moment he accepted Christ was not freedom from anything. It was a freedom for. When Paul accepted Christ and was redeemed for his sins and promised the love and grace of our Heavenly Father, he became free for. Not from. For.

After all, there were many other Christians at the time that accepted Christ and were freed from sin and the fear of death, and they hid. They hid themselves away, away from the eyes of their neighbors and the Romans.

But not Paul. Paul became free for spreading the word. He helped to spread the gospel across the world and his letters still provide comfort and guidance to millions of Christians today, over two thousand years later. It that hour that he accepted Christ, Paul no longer tried to be free from his life as a Jewish man, but became free for his life to God.

There is a certain power in that. A comfort that cannot be found anywhere else. It may seem hard to relate to someone we consider as great as he was, but Paul was just a man. His life was an ordinary life until the moment his eyes were opened. His life from then on was lived for. He stopped trying to be free from something and started living to be free for something.

Every day we are offered the opportunity to quit in our struggles to be free from and instead live to be free for. We don’t need to worry about if it is a great task or not. In being free for, we are given the chance and opportunity truly achieve everything that God has in store for us. Because when we start to be free for, the worry about image and the concerns about what people think melt away.

When we are free for, we cease to struggle. There is no more fight. Being free from holds an opponent we must overcome. It is looking back at the chains that hold us. But to be free for. To be free for, we are looking forward down the path and while there may still be chains behind us, God has already taken up those chains for us and we can walk side by side with Him down the road of our lives.

So I stand here and want to leave you with this question. Will you continue to fight to be free from the demons that God and Christ have already beaten for you, or will you instead be free for a life that by their side?

So allow me to retort.

First of all, let’s stop and look at the “Me” generation for a moment. This is the generation that has been constantly asked to take one for the team. Public education is circling the drain right now. We’ve taken cuts left and right. We’ve severed through initiatives like No Child Left Behind. Our classrooms are over crowded and our teachers are underpaid.

Next let’s look at who raised us. Those of us in the higher brackets of this generation were raised by the last of the baby boomers, a generation that was coming off of the big win against the forces of Axis and the ideal of good over evil. Those of us in the lower brackets grew up watching as our parents worked day after day after day under the belief that they would go somewhere, that they would end up rich and famous. We are a generation that grew up disillusioned, forged in the harshness of shattered dreams.

But I am not going to sit here and blame those who came before me. While I admit that this is a biased opinion and that I am speaking on raging passion, I won’t point fingers.

Mr. Beck, my generation has grown up and seen the dot com boom and collapse. We got to see the joys of coming into the work place as the fall of the American economy began. We are well aware of the fact that we will probably spend most of our lives in a cubicle. Our fairy tales are told by single moms and weekend dads.

You call us a generation that says “me first”. What an unfair statement. Me first…Give me…We want what we can earn. That’s it. A generation that wasn’t punished? Our existence has been punishment. But despite that, despite all of that, we still try. The youth came out to vote in huge numbers back in 2008. We stood up used our voice to sound a call for change for everyone, and you call us selfish. We stand together, side by side, regardless of race (a feat I would like to add that your generation still can’t seem to get a good grip on) to make a difference.

But perhaps the greatest sign of the selflessness of my generation that I’ve seen is when I look to my left and to my right. I am 24 years old and sergeant in the United States Army. I led soldiers, most of which who are just out of high school, in Iraq. Young men who were barely old enough to vote, barely old enough to do anything, and they raised their right hand and made a solemn oath. An oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, to defend this country. They joined to go to one of two countries that they would never have chosen to go to, to risk life and limb. And why?

One reason. Because their country asked. Their country called on them and they answered Mr. Beck. They left mothers, fathers, wives, and children to come to the other side of the world and fight for someone else’s freedom because their country called on them.

Please say whatever rants you want about whatever topics you choose. But how dare you. How dare you sit there on national television in a suit that costs more than what these boys make in two months, and tell us that we are a “me first” generation. That we don’t understand the meaning of sacrifice and putting the greater need above our own.

Mr. Beck, you sit there and you judge us. And for what? For asking to be a part of the future? For saying that we’ve taken one too many for the team and that it is time for us to stand up and take charge and lead the way? You judge us for volunteering to leave our homes and see true poverty and destruction?

Mr. Beck, I believe that you need to take a minute and think real hard about what you are saying. Go ahead. Take a look in the mirror and see who is trying to serve themselves? Because from where I sit, I see a generation that has sat at the kid’s table and gladly taken the scraps left over from the feast. I see a generation that is ready and willing to take the reins and lead. You call us the “Me” generation Mr. Beck. Negative. This is the “Us” Generation. This is the “American” Generation. And please don’t forget that.

So the White House Cheif of Staff….One of the TOP advisors to the president of the United States, went on national television to discuss health care reform. A health care reform that I would like to remind everyone, that the government says will not try and take over or put out of business the insurance companies, but merely offer a fair balance. But the White House Cheif of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, goes on national television and says to the nation that our president believes it will help cut the costs of their health plan and be a benefit to the people of the United States to tax….let me say that again… to TAX health insurance plans that have higher premiums and give out better benefits.

One of the top aides in the White House says the president is in favor of taxing those of us who were able to get a good health insurance plan to help pay for his plan that does not generate the money to work on its own. The president sent his top aide to go on CNN and tell the country that he wants to make insurance companies pay for offering us better benefits to help support his reforms that are designed to not interfer with the plans we already have.

I’m sorry if I seem a tad redundent. I had to phrase that several different ways to see if I understood it.

Ladies and gentlemen…What the FUCK is the White House thinking? I mean, seriously. How does this make sense? So much for all those people who gave up a raise for better insurance. Congrats. Now you make nothing and we’re going to tax your health plan….So much for the unions. Heh, so much for providing an affordable health care reform plan that promotes free and equal trade by dipping into the federal power of levying taxes.

Christ, someone help me understand this. Please, oh please explain how this works. Hehe, if only we had the political authority to get Rahm Emanuel on here to explain what the hell the White House meant by that.

I mean come on White House. I’m not Fox News. You can talk to me right? …You know what, I’d settle for a White House intern…Hell, I’d settle for Monica Lowenski to pop back up on scene and try to explain this. Any one? Please? Help?

Of course, it could be the I don’t understand why everyone wants to be so transparent with their lives now a days. Are we so desperate for our fifeteen minutes of fame that we hook on to these things? So we can have legions of followers who really have no idea who we are as a real person. They just know that we like coffee at 5 in the morning every day from the Starbucks on the corner…Great job. Makes stalking easier. The kidnapping will be tricker if you go for an advid twitter-er, but at least you can stalk them.

Come on now. 140 charactor limit? What thought am I going to get out in 140 charactors? I mean, right now I’m on 182 words and I haven’t even gotten to the real point. But here it is. Why are we so fascinated with the mindless updates of what someone is doing with their daily life? I mean seriously. I like Tom Hanks as an actor. I don’t need to know that he’s driving to work. John McCain is a great politician that I have a lot of respect for. Why should I care that he daughter is sitting at home reading a book?

And this is what got me onto the rant. The past couple days, it has been national news…NATIONAL FUCKING NEWS… that Miley Cyrus quit and Meghan McCain wanted to quit Twitter. I mean, asides from the fact that Meghan McCain is a good looking woman, why am I looking at my CNN RSS feed and reading this? Do we have so little to talk about? But apparently the fact that we are still in Iraq and still lacking approval of any type of strategy for Afganistan, let alone the recommended one by the commanders on the ground, just aren’t important enough.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I’m kinda disaapointed with Meghan that she didn’t quit the site. I mean, if she is going to get a backlash for wearing a tank top (seriously, that’s what happened. You can’t make this shit up) imagine how bad things are when she actually says something?

All I’m saying is what happened to the good ole days when we could go home and just be by ourselves? But no, we had to expand the fishbowl. We had to say we want to know every retardedly mundane detail in someone’s life. Or want to expose those aspects of our life to others. Please, God please, explain to me why? Why God, why?

And again, why are we fascinated with the thoughts that aren’t even really thoughts? I mean, I love blogs. It takes time. It exposes us to an aspect of the person. We learn something. We see something. But instead, we insist on the quick, short things.

You know, come to think about it, the quality of life and experience would be a lot better if we treated more things like sex. I mean, short and quick is rarely good with sex. But yet it seems to be fine with everything else. After all, you never hear anyone bragging about the five minutes they had last night….Well unless it was in a particularly interesting location. So let’s go back to sex. Deliberate, long, good. Seriously, I don’t want a quickie every five seconds.

Oh how I have been tiring of society. I mean, I love being around people. I love the energy and the vibe. But it gets old. I mean, I take leave and come home to hang out with those I went to school with, and I have discovered that most of them I really didn’t like. Of course it works out because they didn’t really like me either. That leaves me with about three or four people I really want to hang out with. They work though. They have responsibilities. So we met up at a bar for some drinks. Then I go out to bars to try and meet new people. But that is not a fulfilling life and I really don’t meet anyone I want to chill with on a regular basis. Besides, I always end up running into other military folk and chill out with them. Mainly because they get it. They understand the lifestyle and I can spend the evening enjoying myself as opposed to explaining myself. And yet, that life is getting old. I’m getting too old to spend every night in a bar. I don’t have the tolerance for alcohol for it. Of course spending every other year in the Middle East and away from it doesn’t help things. But I digress.

Civilization is getting bothersome. It’s hard to connect with people because of what I’ve been through. Thanks to the constant media coverage of the wars, people want to know what it’s “really” like. Despite the questions, though, one gets the feeling that they don’t really care. Heh, half of them just ask so they can spend the rest of the time spewing their own political philosophies at me.

And so I have a lot of respect at the moment for Rep. Flake. I cannot shake this feeling that I am somehow squandering my life. That I am causing an unnecessary overcomplification. I mean, what do we really need to be happy? A nice bedroom set is great, but a matress on the floor works just as well. Heh, hell, I’ve spent most of this past year living on a cot so a matress isn’t even that necessary. TV? But why? My imagination is just as good as what I see. Really, the only things I have found that I want is my computer to write on and internet to have some bit of a connection. That and movies.

Why do we continue to place such value on things that don’t mean anything? I mean, we work our asses off to buy a nice car when a piece of shit with a motor and frame can do the job. We kill ourselves with stress for clothes and the big screens and all this shit that doesn’t do anything really for us. Fight Club really summed it up best. We spend our lives working jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need.

…

Just think about that. Now of course, the movie’s solution to that was to start an underground boxing club. I can’t really do that. My face is too pretty and I have no idea how to fight. But the concept….That’s the important thing. That concept. You know there are so many things we could do to be so much more happy.

But as for me, there is one thought that keeps coming up. One that has been plaguing me for the past year. I almost want to say fuck everything. Society, concepts, expectiations of performance. Everything. And just run off. Run off into the wilderness. Live off the land. Just do little odd jobs, but for the most part, just live. Sit. Think.

Perhaps I am having another crisis of faith. Not religious faith but faith in society. Perhaps it is just that, and all I need to do is to go off for a while, seperate myself and meditate. Then I can come back like Christ, Buddha, or Zarathustra to capture the world with some divine revelation. Or perhaps I may not come back. Or I may just realize that I left because I was merely trying to escape myself. Heh, that’s entirely possible. How often do we assign physical and external attributes to issues that lie within us and our own minds? But still, to run to the mountains. It is a very tempting and pleasing thought isn’t it?

Like I was saying, she really is a good writer and I enjoy the random thoughts that come up. The question of society and life that only a writer can come up with. I mean seriously, who else would question the mundane aside from those who try to recreate it? But she had a question that fascinated me and I wanted to chime in on her discussion, but well, apparently I missed the deadline and she closed the discussion. Sad for me, except for the fact I too can post a blog and resurrect the conversation.

Now hopefully I have adequately confused you all before I dive into the topic. What she wanted to know was why we seem to gloss over the age difference in novels. For example. Twilight. Ah, first off, maybe someone can explain the whole point to that series in the first place. I mean, vampires in high school? WTF? Seriously, as if the nerd did not have enough problems trying to get the cheerleader’s attention off the jock, now you want to throw vamps in there too? FML. I mean, we won’t even go into the fact that every high school I’ve heard of is held during the day, and last time I checked, vampires and day….eh not so great a combination. Unless you’re Wesley Snipes. That guy’s bad ass.

Anyway, onto the actual issue though. The age difference. Why is it this little tramp is drooling for him and what can he see in her? I mean, where do these authors get the idea of such a big age difference. I mean, that shit doesn’t happen in the real world. There are not Playboy bunnies marrying guys in their 70′s. Demi Moore is with a man her own age right? (Fuck Ashton. How dare he prove that she likes the young guys and bringing back that fantasy by taking her off the market. JK. Joke. Don’t take me seriously. And if you do Ashton, I’m a broke soldier. No use with the lawsuits.) But like I was saying, we live in an age where that’s alright.

Even outside of Hollywood, because God knows that place sucks for reality, it happens. Go to a rural country. Iraq, for example. There are marriages there where the man in his 30′s marries the 13 year old girl. Not saying it’s right, just saying it’s happening. But now that we’ve established that there is a large section of society in the world that is perfectly fine with this, let us return to fantasy.

The age difference in the story and why it is glossed over. Well, for one, what is age but a number? I mean, no big deal right? Two, what they see in each other. Well we all know that women love stable men. That’s why fiscal stability and strength are important for mating choices. So someone who is older, or say supernatural like a vampire or demigod or the like, is more than likely going to possess a fair amount of strength. And if they really have lived for a few hundred years, well then I would hope they have a damn good looking portfolio.

And as for what he sees in her. Well seriously, by that point, he’s just looking for someone to pass the moment with right? I mean, time is pretty relative. And the more time you’ve had, that faster “fixed” times seem to go. I mean, when you are 10 years old, a year seems to take so long to pass because you are waiting for the equivalent of 1/10th of your life. At 30, it’s 1/30th. So if the girl is staying mortal, then really, her life time is so short when compared to his, then what does it matter that he could have also nailed her great great great great great great grandmother? I mean seriously now. And if he were to make her immortal like himself? Pfft, then it really isn’t an issue because if one cannot die, what is age?

But here is what I think the big reason those great differences aren’t brought up as a vice in “society” with regards to the book. And that is because no one talks about it. None of the characters that is. I mean, he is obviously not going around telling everyone what he is and that he can live for 500,000 years. It would be bad juju for him. And she cares for him as a person and his soul. So she doesn’t want to endager him. So to the outside world, it appears normal. None of the characters think anything of it, therefore the reader doesn’t. It’s the same reason why we read a fantasy novel like say DragonRiders of Pern and wonder how the dragons are able to go “between” (teleport basically for those of you who haven’t read it). To everyone who lives in that world, it is a natural thing. Just as the relationship is a natural thing.

As for comments about power in the relationship and what not, age has nothing to do with that. I mean, how often do we look at someone who is definately older than us and lose ourselves in their sensuality? Or when we start being the older ones, get lost in the innocence of those younger than we are? Power struggle in a relationship is not necessarily a valid point. After all, if he does not allow her half of the power, it is not a balanced relationship, and there doesn’t need to be an age difference for a relationship to be unbalanced.

Those are just my thoughts on the matter. I could be way off. I may not really get it. But then again, I really do struggle with this relationship concept. Burdons of being a member of society that is not truely a part of it. But that is a rant for another day.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation and our attempts to pull him into our side of the crazy house resulted in talks about America, American culture, and, ultimately, the declaration that America is merely a failed experiment in democracy. Now naturally I found this to be a problem, and because I didn’t want to run off half cocked on emotion, I’m bringing it here. To the web. Where the entire world can voice their opinion on the issue. True democracy at work.

Now on to the issue. First of all, we should probably clarify that the United States was never set up as a democracy but a democratic republic. The people have the opportunity to vote on national representatives and can override any decision, but we delegate the authority of regular decisions to those representatives. It is not a true democracy in the sense that the people do not decide on every issue, nor is it a true republic in the sense that the representatives do not have ultimate authority. So the question is already invalid right there, but to humor the spirit of the argument, let’s continue.

Let us take a look at recent events actually. Public outcry has led constant change and review of the health care plan. Of course, the whole town hall scene is more like democrazy than democracy, but still it’s normal people going out to make a difference. We’ve had all sorts of people holding the highest levels in this country. The end of slavery and civil war saw the election of the first African American senator. We’ve had minorities of both race and religion serving in Congress, cabinet positions, the Supreme Court, and even the presidency. Any child in this country has the opportunity to grow up and do whatever it is they want.

Rockefeller had almost no money when he got into the railroad business and managed to catapult himself to becoming one of the richest men in the country during his time. Tyler Perry was living out of his car when he started to write his plays. Now he sits near the top of the television world sharing his experience with everyone while remaining true to where he came from.

All a person in America needs is drive and desire and they can achieve as much or as little as they choose. We have crushed the Great Chain of Being. We have perfected social mobility. No longer are we stuck in the class we are born into.  No where else in the world can we go from nothing to everything based on the ability to run with a football. A failed experiment? I say that we have truly captured the idea of democracy. The people of the United States can lead us straight to the top or straight to hell, but it is the people that will lead us.

That’s right friends, a good zombie plan is the difference between survival and being a snack. Now very few of us will be lucky enough to wake up from a coma after the initial zombie blitzkrieg through civilization and then rescued by someone else who had a good zombie plan, so it is important to start thinking about these things now.

Now there are many different variations to your basic zombie. You have your slow moving ones, your runners, smart, dumb, a collective intelligence, but regardless of what type of zombie you are facing, the methods of dealing with them are pretty much the same.

First off, if some one stumbles up to you with a blank expression, grey skin, and drooling (you know, basically looking like a heroin addict) you should probably start running away. Avoid contact and their mouth region. If you get bitten….well it was nice knowing you.

Now there is going to be a general wide spread panic as the legions of the undead march through out the city. Remain calm. Take advantage of the civil unrest to start stockpiling. First thing you should probably start collecting is some type of weapon. Now the best way to eliminate your zombie threat is to destroy the brain/skull region. So if guns are your thing, you want large caliber, shotguns, and large amounts of ammos. Rifles are decent, but those become more for self amusement with picking off zombies and repelling your normal human raider once things start to calm down.  What you want is something that does a lot of damage quickly.

In addition to a good firearm, you also want to pick yourself up a good melee weapon. Bats, shovels, clubs, things of that nature are good. Just make sure it’s nice and sturdy. After all, you don’t want to be surrounded by hungry, hungry zombies and have your bat break on the second swing. Bladed weapons are good too, but we aren’t talking your little butterfly knife. A zombie isn’t going to stop from a little prick in the arm. Machetes are a good choice. Just remember what ever you choose, keep it sharp or carry a few so you can leave it in a zombie head if it gets stuck and you need to run.

Now once you have your self protection taken care off, canned foods. Canned foods. Canned foods. They last for a long time. They are easily stored and carried. They don’t need to be heated. Beans are a good choice. Mixed veggies. It’s not a great diet, but it works. It’ll keep you going. You also want to pick up some bottled water. The amount will vary. If you are in a place that still has running water, than reuse the bottles. Same for if you are near a stream or river.

Last thing on your grocery list should be cigerettes and alcohol. As much as you can get. The reasons? Well first of all, after a zombie invasion, you won’t have access to all the medical advances and decent dieting that lets us live into our 60′s and 70′s, so cancer is no longer an issue, you won’t be around long enough for it to kill you. But more importantly, unless you are of a military or redneck background yourself, you’ll need it to get yourself in the door with those who are.

Yes, military and rednecks should be your best friends during a zombie invasion. The military will be trained to survive almost anything, under any condition, and the ability for teamwork will help ensure tasks are done quickly and effectively so that you can stay alive. Rednecks…who else in the country has more guns than a redneck? Plus your average redneck can build, wire, fix, or rig just about anything in regards to vehicles, housing, or even a few fun explosive surprises for the zombie horde at your door step.

Now by following these simple guidelines, you should be able to survive the first week or so of the zombie attacks. By that point, the cities should pretty much be empty, most of mankind now a zombie, and you can start looking for other survivors to band together with to rebuild the human race. More to come later.