Best Martial Art Against Zombie Invasion
As we head into October, the month of Halloween, and spooks, I think we probably all have the same thing on our mind: How do I best prepare myself to survive in the event of a zombie invasion?
Well, let’s start with fire-arms. First off, skip the concealed carry… once the undead walk no one really cares about law anymore. It might be handy to make sure you have the gun with you in case things degenerate really quickly, but otherwise you risk looking like an idiot walking around with a fanny pack.
I would however, recommend learning to shoot straight. Even with that though, ammo will quickly become a problem.
So within a short amount of time you will be relying on your body and its abilities to keep you alive. Let’s look at a few of the martial arts, and how exactly they stack up:
In my mind Jiujitsu is out of the running immediately. The last thing in the world I wanna do is wrap up with a zombie and fall to the ground in the middle of a swarm of the flesh eating buggers.
Another popular and normally effective style: Mui Thai is also out in my mind. Fist strikes are way too risky. A cut on the knuckle lets infected blood in and before you know it you munching on your family members. Kicks can be risky too. It puts you off balance, and if even a single kick gets caught you’re done. I would not want to rely much on my Mui Thai clinch either… grabbing the head of a biter, and driving their open mouth into my knee sounds like a bad idea.
Okay, so next we get to Judo. I think Judo could do fairly well… You would ave to choose a few throws that would put you at the least risk. Definitely avoid Koshi Garuma, or anything that puts you by the mouth. Carefully executed Sasi throws could do okay though, a could several others.
Personally however, I would put Aikido ahead of Judo here. As “The ancient art of getting the hell out of the way of stuff,” Aikido is less about engaging, and more about avoiding. Sounds like a good plan.
On the top of my list however, would be Kendo. Knows as “The art of the Sword,” or “The ancient art of beating the hell out of stuff with sticks, swords, or any crap handy,” this one is a solid bet. The problem is that until the zombie attack happens you have little real-world self defense opportunities to test your skills unless you join the SCA and stage massive mock-medieval battles. But tha might be fun too… plus you can all hang around and play D&D in your bunker to keep yourselves busy after the fall of humankind.
[...] BJJ update coming soon. In the meantime, don’t forget to prepare for Halloween… [...]
Doesn’t Krav Maga focus on breaking limbs including necks? It would be effective if that’s the case since a broken neck is an internal decapitation and would at least stop them from being able to move…
I’m a friend of Matt Bishop and he forwarded me the link to this article. I love it. That was absolutely hilarious!
Matt, a couple of comments on that:
Krav Maga focuses primarily on what they call “bursting”. That is a technique where you block the attack wit one arm, but also crush your other hand into the face or neck while lunging slightly forward. I agree this has the potential to work well on a zombie by knocking them off balance. It think it would have less of the “shock” effect that it has on a (live) human though.
As for the neck break, I am not aware of a Krav Kagaian neck break move, but if so it would be a nice one for zombies. Bear in mind however, that decapitation witout the destruction of te brain just means an imobile head laying around snapping at you. Definitely less threatening though!
Leslie,
Thanks for chiming in! It might seem funny now, but when you have spent two weeks living on a rooftop and eating nothing but pork and beans you will reflect back on this and be glad for what you learned!