(note that Leichefaust literally means “corpse fist” or “corpse smasher”- just me having fun with German.)
The primary means of destroying a zombie require you to damage or destroy the brain. There are hundreds of diverse and gory ways to accomplish this- from a bullet to the frontal lobe to fire to Rube Goldberg-esque chainsaw traps, all must end in brain failure in the target.
Of course, these all have varying degrees of efficiency. We will examine the various methods you could dispatch a Zack in terms of energy expended. Shooting a zombie in the head takes very little effort on the users’ part, but utilizes a violent and somewhat wasteful gunpowder charge in the form of chemical energy. Staving a Zacks’ head in with an axe requires energy expenditure on behalf of the user, but very little otherwise. I have already designed zombie-dispatching weapons (see the MK. II Katyusha for more details), but let’s be honest, it’s an incredibly wasteful concept. On a per-round basis the design is efficient, but the suggested number of individual barrels negates this advantage. We need a weapon that is very energy-efficient, doesn’t require any great preparation or construction beforehand, has theoretically unlimited ammunition, and can kill from considerable range.
But what fits this description? Bows or crossbows come to mind, but both have their disadvantages- bows require training to operate with any accuracy, while crossbows are slow-loading, and both are hampered by the fact that they can only fire the arrow or bolt designed for them and nothing else- even home-made projectiles that are a close match can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the weapon.
The Perfect Weapon
So I sat down, took out a big-ass scratch pad, and thought about the sort of thing you’d build in half an hour in your basement and then camp on your roof for a week with and plink shamblers. You’d need something that was quiet, accurate, flexible, and cheap to make.
I wasn’t coming up with anything even half-useful, so I drew myself a bath and read a novel on Vietnam for a while. They mentioned, off-hand, a strange bamboo arrangement the Viet Cong were using to launch hand grenades as mortar rounds when it hit me. I more or less pulled an Archimedes, jumping out of the bath and shouting “Eureka!” whilst running naked down the street.
Well, maybe not, but that’s besides the point. I had hit upon a damn good idea for a ranged weapon, more like an elastic cannon than a bow. I’ll try to start making sense again, so bear with me.
Construction of the Leichefaust
First, you need a ‘barrel’. This won’t matter a whole lot, as it doesn’t need to be very strong and sturdy (no explosions or pressure to deal with),but it does have to be very straight and smooth on the inside, and should have a bore roughly matching that of the projectile size you want to use (anything more than an inch is a siege weapon and then some, I don’t suggest more than half an inch). If you go smaller, it’s a one-man thing you could carry on you in a pinch- bigger, and it becomes a stationary, two-man job to operate. As a rule, the shortest I’d go is 4 feet- double it if it’s a wide-bore barrel. Long length allows for longer projectiles which are more stable in flight and have more momentum on hitting a target. If at all possible, ensure it has a ‘notch’ along one of the ends- something that protrudes a little bit, so it can be used both as a primitive sight (if you have another near the breech) and a ‘nock’ for the ‘propellant’…
I’m picturing 5 feet of water piping, with T-junctions at the end, like so-
-l----------l-
Crude, but you (ideally) get the idea.
Next, we need the ‘propellant’, for lack of a better term. No gunpowder here, no siree. Think of a big rubber band, and the enormous potential energy it would contain. Oh yes. We’re going to kill zombies with a rubber band. Well, a rubber band would be ideal, but I understand our supply of novelty elastics is rather thin right now, so substitutes are very possible (and then some). High-tension bungie cords would work great, as would rubber surgical tubing. If it’s not that taut, loop it around a few times to achieve the same result. In any case, you need double the length of your barrel and then some, so it can be tied in a loop just as long as the barrel. At this point, you would slip one end of the loop over one of the notches/whatever at the muzzle of the barrel.
Finally, the projectile itself. I’m tired of writing, so I’ll be blunt- use wooden dowels as long as the barrel that give the closest loose fit so they can slide freely. Sharpen the heads, then slide them down the barrel and slip one end of the cord over the blunt end of the spear. You see where I’m going with this. Pull back, release, easily enough kinetic energy to take out a Zed-head.
If you want an example of the kinetic energy this presents, get a ball-point pen and an elastic. Take the pen cartridge out of the pen casing, and re-insert it, but flipped around and from the back, so the end of the cartridge is sticking out of the business end of the shell. Holding the pen shell back-end away from you, hold an elastic near the muzzle, and fire as described. The range you can manage on a mock-up like this is incredible- while not a killer, you can fire the cartridge a few hundred feet, easy.
Modifications:
There are lots of things you could do to this basic design to improve it. The most notable would be modifying the ammunition for increased lethality. You could attach a small explosive or incendiary device to the head of an extra-long spear, glue a few streamers near the end, and use it effectively as a mortar or rocket-launcher of sorts. If you used an extra-large bore, you could fire bundles of 3, 5, 15 spears at once for massive crowd damage. A bit of pitch-soaked burning rag added makes it an adept fire-starting tool at range. And so on, and so forth.
I’m sorry, I wrote this in a blind rush. Hopefully it’s somewhat coherent and not ridiculously impractical or illogical. Have fun, as always, and try not to burn the house down.
