Funny; I sort of sensed it was about zombie time. But have no fear: the master is here.
Depending on the kind of outbreak, the only hope of survival is a hard-enclosed area of several hundred hecares. That's right: hectares as in land management and agriculture, because without a renewable supply of food, survivors will all be back to subsistence agriculture in ten years at most. Five is nearer the mark. Perishables will be gone in a month; canned goods are rarely consumable past two or three years. Dry foods will go longer - twice-baked bread actually has a decent shelf life, though not past the canned sell-by - but one gets tired of carbs. If you can process meat and dry it, you might have a store that will last you long enough to get started on your new life as a peasant. Or a lordling if you happen to have one of Dyw's AFVs. Two things in consideration until you can find yourself an island or fortified peninsula: silence, so that you don't end up with a chain of a million zombies or so following your AFV (yes, you, Dyw), and temporary security, like a nice shopping centre. The latter is considered total safety by many zombie survivors - food (since every mall has a pet store), clothing, generator and a very aesthetic water fountain in the middle - but is actually a deathtrap in the end. How are you going to get out? If the zombies rot in a couple years, great, depending on how many people are in there with you (and let's hope it's not just you so you don't go stark raving mad). If not...well, zombies like malls - and I hope you can seal off the massive, plate glass windows, by the by. The lights will go eventually, since no matter how much gas you have stocked up, the generator will eat it up, and whatever isn't being used will go bad. It doesn't last forever and BP won't be delivering, no matter what their prospectus says. Within a few years, it's back to shank's mare, or an actual mare if any horses have survived.
(Edit: they won't have. Ever read "Maneaters of Kumayon"? My dad's favourite book. The author was a hunter of man-eating tigers and wolves in India, and lions in Africa. His technique wasn't anything special...just got up and walked after them, trailing them all the while. Not running, like Conan trailing a deer, not jogging. Just getting up in the morning and walking. The animals, you see, lack two things: willpower, so that they can make themselves keep going, and free time to hunt for food along the way. So they get weaker, and you keep following, walking steadily after them...sound like anything in this scenario? Except the zombies don't have to sleep either...so any wildlife larger than a chicken, let alone domestic animal strains, are fucked from the word go...and there weren't three hundred million hunters wandering around after the tigers and wolves in the book.)
Now, people do say that the mall is a deathtrap, and it might well be. Zombie clearance is the issue - but this is the genius of a mall defense. No mall stocks ammo...outside Texas, anyway...and you're probably asking yourself: I survived the initial zombie rush and the waves of buttless-chap Australians, but how do I clear out the hordes massed around the mall? Easy, since you have nothing but time: you go zombie-fishing. One handy rope that reaches from the nice flat roof to the ground and a single cinder block, and you have a game both helpful to your immediate situation as well as being good fun for everyone, since a cinder block dropped to the head kills zombies as easily as regular humans; the rope makes for handy retrieval. (Just don't forget to wear gloves.)
But all in all, an island is the place to be, preferably with a nice strong undertow so that the aimlessly wandering hordes don't eventually catch sight of your fires - don't forget, you're back in the Stone Age again - from the mainland and decide to walk over and see what's for dinner. Of course, the odd zombie is going to show up sooner or later, unless you're far enough out that z-heads walking across the bottom would lose their direction in the gloom. Or maybe they'd chase fish, even: who knows? Even then, there's such a thing as random chance and infected bandits. No, a nice unknown island is best, with lots of arable land - for hand-cultivation, since none of you monkeys possesses enough sense to breed cattle...or indeed any cattle, since they've undoubtedly all been wiped out by masses hordes sweeping over the nice, open Midwest. Hope you're good with a bellows and hammer...and at finding iron ore...and hand-planting. You'll learn a new hatred for mice, rats and crows as the endless, humourless years drag on, and wonder why in the hell we never eradicated all of the fucking things when we had the chance.
But, enjoy your new post-zomboctalyptic world!
(Say...did you think to get a tetanus shot?)
