Reddit reviews The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye

You take the easy way out, and read these.

They come in single issues, trade paperbacks and books. The single issues will take forever to collect, the trade paperbacks is in 13 volumes at the moment, and the books are at 6 volumes, each spanning about 300 pages.

Unless you really need another heavy object around the house, stay away from the books.

No, you can get them all online via the Pirate Bay, but you can buy them on amazon.com and a pretty reasonable price. They ship really fast too, if you have prime!

I'd suggest just buying the paperback volumes, I believe they are up to volume 13 now. I say this because they look nice on your bookshelf. Volume 1

Doubt there's too much difference in weight, but for each clean, relatively effort free slice I get with a katana, you'll be taking 2 or 3 full force slogs to beat in their skulls.

Fingers crossed we never haver to fight for more than a few minutes at a time. But when the whole worlds covered in zombies you never know. Have a read of World War Z or the Walking Dead for reference if you haven't already. They might just save your life.

Easy, just get him a Zombie survival guide from Dymocks/Kinokuniya. What you have to watch out for is that you don't get him a shit one, of which there are many. IMO, The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks is the best one out there. If he hasn't read it, World War Z also by Max Brooks is excellent reading. It's not so much a guide as a collection of individual recounts, reports and stuff from different people over the course of a zombie breakout. It reads realistically which is more than I can say for the majority of Zombie related "survival guides" and books that are just stupid. They're making a movie out of it with Brad Pitt starring - just to show it's popularity.

If he hasn't seen The Walking Dead, getting him the seasons on DVD might be a good idea. Awesome TV show - again, realistic. If he's seen them, don't bother. I mean, he can just download them anyway so I guess this would be a crap gift unless he really likes the show. There are graphic novels that the show is based on which might be good.

If he's a gamer, might be good to get him ARMA II: Combined Operations. The reason I say that there's a great zombie survival mod for it called Day Z which is basically an online multiplayer open-world zombie survival like game. Trust me, he'll like it. Steam summer sale is on right now so ARMA II is 20% - if you can wait, don't buy it yet as it may go on sale for more (possibly up to 75%) if it goes up as a daily deal/flash sale/community choice. There's also a The Walking Dead game which I've heard is good. It's already been a daily deal so 25% is as good as it will get now.

Last of all, making him a kit might be cool. I put together this for a redditor last year. You can probably make a better one than me - I'll admit I cheaped out a little. Get a box or a backpack (you can cheap out on the backpack) and fill it up with things like a flashlight, a med kit (bandaids, bandages, surgical scissors, sports tape etc. things you can buy from a pharmacy), water purification tablets (this especially adds to it IMO), food (canned, power bars or, if you want to go the extra mile, MREs), thick army socks, a compass, etc. Basically just shit you'd take with you if you were going camping. Make it as compact/lightweight as possible.


Well, fuck, that turned out to be a lot longer than I intended. Anyway, good luck.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing. What I did for that same redditor last year was that I wrote a survival plan for him. Basically, if you get him that Max Brooks Survival Guide, one of the things they suggest is hiding out in a prison (fortification, food, water, exercise yard, accommodation, weapons, remote etc.) - what I did was that I researched prisons in the walkable/bikable vicinity of his house and I mapped out routes to them from his house on a map I printed of his house from google maps.

I would read it before you watch the show, it will help put a lot of characters and events in context. It might answer some questions too, like "Why did they do X instead of Y ."

Download CDisplay to read the comics, and grab a torrent off Pirate Bay (torrent). Although it is an issue based comic, they do break down the story into different books. You can get those on Amazon if you want to pay: Walking Dead, Volume 1.

At the very worst, you can read the comic book summarized on Wikipedia. The Walking Dead Wiki

The comic book's best aspect is its intense story. The dialog is kind of "meh," which is why it's really depressing that the TV show has dialog just as underwhelming if not more so than the comic. Happy hunting and good reading.

the walking dead?

http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Dead-Days-Gone-Bye/dp/1582403589