tl/dr: The zombies are coming. The first will "show up" in two weeks. I
have about $3000 to prepare and my plan is to hide in my home for as
long as possible. I need to secure my house, buy food and supplies, and make any necessary upgrades. I figure that ability to buy food/water will be my biggest limiting factor. What can I do on my budget to maximize the time my wife and I can hide out, and how long until I have to start scavenging? My goal is to hide for a few months, after which all the zombies will hopefully be dead.

The zombies are coming. Only I know it. Trying to convince anyone else will be a fools errand, and will waste the two weeks I have to prepare. These will be "28 days later" style zombies - fast and very dangerous, but they need to eat and will start dying on their own if I wait long enough. That's my goal: to wait them out. I certainly don't want to risk a fight with any of them. Here are the details:

1. I live in a typical suburban neighborhood in a medium-sized US city. There are roughly 500,000 soon-to-be zombies in the city around me.


2. My house is average - 3 bedrooms, 1000 square feet (100 m²), one car garage, and a fenced in backyard


3. Walls are plenty strong, windows and doors are not and must be secured.


4. The fence is a standard 6-foot (2 m) privacy fence and in good shape. It should be secure, as long as I don't attract an entire horde of the undead


5. The backyard gives about 0.25 acres (1000 $m^2$) of arable land. It is currently all grass. I can't decide if it is an asset or a liability.


6. My wife will be with me. She certainly isn't going to believe me, but I can convince her to not leave me for two weeks. She isn't going to help me prepare, but once the zombies show up she'll obviously be on my page.


7. Power and water will obviously be turning off soon after it starts. More importantly though, my toilets will stop working. That's going to be a large problem that I'm not sure how to deal with.


8. My finances are crappy and my mortgage just came out of my bank account. My next paycheck won't show up until Z-Day, so it's useless. I'm going to drain my checking and max out my credit card, but that will only get me about $2000. I can pawn some stuff for another grand. That's all the money I have to prepare.


9. After a couple weeks the zombie population will reach peak numbers, and start to decline. They'll be around for a while though as they pick out all the other survivors that don't hide as well as me. After 2 weeks of population explosion their numbers will start to half once every ~3 weeks. I'm hoping to stay in hiding for at least 12 weeks.


10. I want to avoid excessive rationing. The longer I stay in hiding, the safer it will be when I emerge, but if I've been on a starvation diet for a couple weeks and happen to run into a zombie, I'll definitely be a dead man.


11. Since this will hit quickly, I expect there to be plenty of room for scavenging once I emerge. As a result the goal is literally just to hide for as long as possible. If I can stay in hiding for a few months I should be okay after that.

What's the best way to use my resources, and how long will I be able to stay in hiding? Will I be able to stay in hiding for ~4 months?

You have several concerns and the limiting factor here is money. We'll have to assume you're a handy person and can do your own installations.

1. Security.

You want to buy a security screen door for each exterior door of the house (or at least one for the front and one for the rear and you can seal off side doors). These will run you about $300 each, but you can sometimes find them used, especially if you don't care if they are an exact fit (as long as no zombie hands can reach through, you're okay) and aesthetics.

Window bars aren't that expensive, but they will add up fast, depending on how many windows you have. This 3x4 foot one is $34. Again, they're often available used and do check your local junkyard or recycling place. Exact fit is not important.

Your fence is going to be the more expensive issue. It's in good shape but privacy fences are easy to climb and to break through. It depends a lot on how resourceful, agile, and desperate the zombies are. Can they get and use ladders? Move large objects to the edge of your fence and use them to get over? Can they just stand on top of each other?

They may not bother someone with a fence in the beginning, but as they start to die off and their lack of food makes them more desperate, they are likely to take more extreme measures to feed.

Securing the entire backyard is not possible on your budget (and timeline). Instead, put your resources into creating a cage out of chain link fencing (or similar fencing used in zoos and kennels) around your back porch/patio area only. Don't forget to fence in the roof of this extension.

This will protect your washing water that doesn't fit in the house, other large supplies, and your cooking area (and your toilet area if it's needed).

Note that your security is to 1) keep out zombies, and 2) keep out other humans.

2. Food.

This is easy. Go to Grocery Outlet or some other discount place and get lots of shelf stable food that doesn't need cooking. Cans of beef stew, tunafish, etc. Things that are cheap and high in protein and calories. Consider also restaurant supply places. The prices are super cheap for a lot of things and most of them let you shop once without a membership (at my local one, membership is free but you have to have a business tax ID or other proof of a business, which does not have to be a restaurant). Make sure you don't buy anything that is perishable after being opened if you can't finish it before it goes off.

Buy bags of beans and rice and dried peas and lentils. Fresh vegetables that easily keep a couple months without refrigeration: carrots, potatoes, onions. Dried fruit, jam, etc. Give yourself a variety. Stock up on cooking oil and herbs/spices. Make sure there is plenty of salt.

You don't want to starve and you don't want to be tempted to leave the house. Buying in bulk is fairly cheap and there are places that sell stuff cheap because the labels got damaged or the manufacturer changed the packaging design.

3. Cooking.

Camping stoves are cheap (a heavy-duty single burner one that connects to large propane tanks is about $38), these are available used or sometimes in thrift stores (test them!), and run on propane. An empty 40lb tank runs about less than 100 bucks and holds just over 9 gallons of propane. Fill it up for 18-36 bucks. Buy several tanks.

The above stove with the above tank will last for about 15 hours of cooking. But that stove is very strong (55,000 BTU) and is suitable for boiling large pots of water, making pots of beans, etc. Have a smaller camping stove as well for tasks like heating up small amounts of water and food (this double burner one runs $43). These only use more like 10,000 BTU per burner. So your tank will last for about 135 hours.

If you already own a charcoal grill, you can use that too, but the smell will broadcast your location (especially to hungry and desperate humans) and it must be used in the backyard, which may not be possible after a while.

Buy a big aluminum pot for boiling water and etc. Thrift stores and garage sales will have these plus camping stoves for cheap.

4. Water.

Drinking water will be okay after a few weeks in opened containers, but buy purifying drops just in case. If your water is chlorinated, it should be okay to put tap water into old water bottles and close them. You can also buy sealed bottled water, but it tends to run about $1/gallon.

For handwashing water, use tap water to fill up large empty drinking water containers with spigots. Enlarge the vent hole on top until you can get a funnel in there. I do this for camping and it works great for hands and dishes.

The standard is one gallon per person per day. Two people for 4 months is 240 gallons. About half of that should be sealed drinking water. The rest can be potable tap water in clean closed containers.

5. Sanitation.

Find used wading pools that do not have any leaks and fill them all in your yard with the hose. This is your water for bathing, cleaning, dishes, and sanitation. You can do a final rinse of dishes and stuff with drinking water if needed. Have buckets of various sizes.

Your toilets will still function!! The only thing that will be missing is the incoming water to fill the tank. And it might not even be turned off. If it is, know that all you need to flush your toilet is 2 gallons of water quickly poured into the bowl. You can fill the tank itself but just pouring into the bowl is probably more efficient. Test this out before the zombies come because you want to know which works better for each of your actual toilets (they're all a bit different).

As a backup, get two chamber pots (so you and your wife don't have to share). And dig a hole in the backyard and cover with plywood. You can have a squat toilet or just use the chamber pots and empty them. Have a smaller hole nearer the house (in your outdoor security area) if you can no longer use the backyard. Make sure some of the washing water is reachable (fill your bathtub and also containers in the house).

You can stay clean enough with bowls and washcloths but also consider a solar shower. They run about $20.

Buy a case of two of toilet paper at Costco. Have plenty of dish soap, hand soap, etc. Cheap clean towels. A clothesline outdoors and one indoors. Stoppers for your sinks to use them for washing (the drains will still function). Don't get behind on laundry before the start of this mess. Keep dishes washed and don't let them pile up.

6. Conclusions.

Yes, you can have enough food, water, and sanitation with your budget and setup to last you 4 months.

The issue you might not have the money (or prep time) for is security. But if you plan that you may lose access to your backyard and just secure the doors and windows of the house itself, you should be okay. Ideally you should have a back patio area secured as well. You don't have the money (or time) to secure your entire backyard but you should have access to it for a short time at least. It is best to do your cooking and toilet needs (if the house toilets stop draining) outdoors and water storage is better outdoors as well due to space. But you can do it all inside if you have to.

Water and Food: These are easy. Spend $60 on a Costco membership and you can get a pallet of spring water for $360. That's enough water for you and your wife for 8 months if you use it for nothing but drinking. Then stock up on non-perishable foods that don't need to be cooked. Beans, canned fish (in oil for extra calories), nut butters, crackers, and protein bars should be your staples; high calorie and nutrition density for low cost. Let's say you spend $1000 on food, we can round your food and water bill to $1400.

Fortification: Both Lowes and The Home Depot have an in-store credit cards. Assuming that your credit is decent, you should be able to open one at each store and max it out in the same day. By the time the first bill comes due, civilization will have long since collapsed. So, I'm giving you a bonus budget of $2000 for construction supplies. I'm assuming your home is two stories plus a basement and attached garage. Your Lowes mad money should be enough to board up all the windows and doors on the ground floor and basement. Board up most of the windows on the second story as well, but leave one openable. Store a ladder near this window. You can lower it when you need to access the outdoors and raise it when the Z's are nearby. This is your only ingress and egress. On the ground level, have one board at eye-level on each door that can easily be removed and replaced from the inside. This is your Zombie-Killing Hole. If Z's start knocking on your door, open the ZKH and stab them in the brain with a long-handled melee weapon to silently kill them without attracting the horde; you don't want the first one to attract others after all. I recommend this harpoon from Amazon for $150. You wouldn't throw it, just stab with it, although the retrieval rope will be useful if you make a non-lethal hit and a Z starts to retreat with your weapon embedded. To have a few spares, spend $450.

Waste removal: Convert your garage into a ventilated improved pit latrine. This will be your most complex construction job, but you should be able to complete it in a week and it will last 6-9 months without needing to be emptied. You'll need to rent a concrete cutter and possibly a mini-excavator from one of the hardware stores, and you'll need some pipe, mesh, and concrete, but you can put all of this on your in-store credit cards (see above section). So, the overall cost of this is $0.

Sanitation: Forget about showering. The less water you use, the longer you can stay holed up. On Amazon, you can get 5 gallons of sanitizer for $100. Use this as needed to wipe down the smelly bits. You'll also need to drop about $30 on enough toilet paper for 4 months and another $30 on sanitary products for the missus, assuming she is pre-menopausal. (Get pads, not tampons, as this will lower the risk of an extremely inconvenient infection, given that cleanliness will be low). So your sanitation budget is $160.

Heat/Comfort: You haven't given us the location of this disaster, but assume that in 4 months you will see some cold weather. Pick the smallest room on the second floor (NOT the room with the egress) and line it with insulation using your hardware store money. REI has an in-store credit card. Open that and max it out on a heater and all the propane you can get. This will only be enough to run the heater for 120 hours, so you will have to use it sparingly. If you expect a lot of cold nights, you can spend some real money on propane, but I'm going to assume that you will ration it instead. With the added insulation and every blanket you own in one room, you should be able to get through some cold nights with minimal added heating. $0 spent.

Entertainment/Communication: The first few weeks will be a flurry of activity, but after that it's gonna get BORING and you and your wife will start to turn on each other. A Kindle costs $89, but you can sign up for 5 payments of $18. Of course, you'll only ever make the first payment, so you can get 2 Kindles for $36. Get a solar power bank for $39 to keep them powered once the grid goes down. Then load both Kindles with all the public domain books you can; they're all free to download. Drop another $50 on some rechargeable lamps; it's gonna be dark with all the windows boarded up. Also spend $25 on a set of rechargeable walkie-talkies. This way you can communicate from different parts of the house and alert each other of danger without shouting and attracting Z's. They will be especially useful once you start scavenging. Total: $150.

All told, this accounts for $2160. That means you have some wiggle room to go over budget at the hardware stores or REI. Or, you can get more food and paper goods and plan for an even longer hibernation.

NB: You may be skeptical of all the extra credit I've given here. As evidence of my credibility, I will offer this anecdote: My identity was stolen several years ago and the thieves opened 11 in-store credit cards in 2 days and maxed them all out. I didn't find out until a month later when the first bill arrived - no red flags had been raised by the excess activity. The credit reporting system is not agile enough to stop this sort of thing from happening. I therefore believe our protagonist should be able to lean heavily on credit provided he has no reason to care about the consequences.

1. Pay some punk kid to break your windows a couple of times in the night. Convince your wife that the only way to deal with this is to get steel grills over windows and doors.




2. Stock up on food and water.




3. Buy a camp stove and plenty of fuel.

That's pretty much all you have to do in practice.

Your limiting factor is entirely about how much food, water, and fuel you can lay down without your wife losing her rag. Though you'll only have to put up with the silent treatment for a couple of weeks.