No matter how nice of a person you were pre-apocalypse, now that the living dead are roaming the Earth eating brains some tough decisions are going to have to be made.  Who do you allow into your trust, your compound, and your heart?  Believe it or not, a relatively cold calculus may be the right way to determine who gets in and who gets eaten.

The Calculus 

Here’s the skinny.  Every person that you add to your zombie prepping team needs to increase the net survivability of your entire clan.  You can only add people who are going to bring an overall utility to your group that outweighs their cost in groceries.  It’s simple economics.  For instance, the following people might be particularly good additions:

Add these folks:

Mechanic. Not the kind who runs the computer at the Toyota dealership that knows how to turn off the ‘check engine’ light.  The kind who can rebuild a two stroke engine with his bare hands.  The kind who takes apart dirt bikes for fun.  The kind which might also be employed to build a rock-hurling siege engine.  You get the idea.

Master Gardner.  Many states have a master gardener training program.  Florida has one, and my mom has completed the training.  She’s now able to grow a potato in the Sahara desert, or some such shit.  It’s an incredibly useful skill set to have on the team, particularly considering she can grow 50-100 times her own caloric requirements per year on our available arable land.  That, friends, is good zombie calculus.

Military strategist. Once everybody figures out that your master gardener is keeping you in grub, they’re going to try to take it.  That’s when it’s helpful to have a military strategist to set up security, defenses, and care for weapons and ammunition, etc.  It’s particularly helpful to have a Security Forces or Base Defense specialist in the fold, but if circumstances permit you might also like to recruit an offensive specialist with raiding experience such as a battalion-experienced Ranger.  Bottom line, other people might have some stuff you need.  I don’t want to be Genghis Khan here, but having the ability to take what you need if worse comes to worse is a win. I’ll have my raiding party ready.  Will you?

Able-bodied males. Also known as fighters, farmers, and foragers.  Most able-bodies men are going to be able to produce more than their own needs in terms of food and other useful collateral by hunting, gathering, fighting, securing shit, etc.  Don’t give me that psycho babble equal opportunity bullshit either.  You know what the deal is over here.  It’s survival time.

So, by contrast, you should now know who you shouldn’t add, right?  Families with a bunch of kids, particularly if all of those kids are female.  Your grandmother.  Your ailing high school french teacher with the hurt back.  Some tough choices have to be made if you’re going to survive the zombie apocalypse.  Don’t shoot the messenger.