Fortunately, living in the oldest consistently-inhabited city in the continental United States, we wouldn't have to travel far to get to historic downtown and set up shop in Castillo de San Marcos!

 

Great topic!

Consider:
1. What food storage capabilities does it have?
2. Ditto fresh water.
3. How is the structure hardened, and against what? (It's not just zombies you need to think about)
4. What is the exit strategy? (sticking yourself in a box with no exit plan is certain death eventually)


Some interesting articles

http://www.oddee.com/item_98962.aspx

http://www.hardenedstructures.com/

http://www.risingsbunkers.com/fortified-homes/

 

Definitely great points to consider, which is partly why I immediately thought of an older structure (as long as it's still sound) because a) it's lasted the test of time already and b) people didn't have the conveniences of modern technology, food preservation, and water decontamination systems, so the resource areas inside would be primitive and capable of serving mankind once again post-electricity and post-technology. I suppose a bit like the explanation given as to why The Hilltop people settled in that historic living history museum place - "they figured it worked before the modern world, so it should work after the modern world has died".

Speaking specifically about my fort:

1. Several storage rooms inside the coquina walls were used specifically for food storage. Since some others were used as storage for gunpowder, care was taken to make these rooms as dry as possible. There is even one dark room that is situated in an area of the fort where the tide comes up enough to naturally flush things away and they used that as the latrine. Natural waste disposal. We also have Matanzas Bay right outside our walls, so gather some of the fishing and shrimping boats at the bayfront docks and now we can collect fish, shrimp, and dolphins. Not to mention all the food waiting to be scavenged from historic downtown from all those hotels and restaurants - just gotta be VERY careful with the scout teams as the streets and alleys are small and narrow, so easier to be ambushed. And hell, while raiding the hotels, let's drag the beds back and now we've got real living accommodations inside the fort.

2. There is a ground well inside of the walls with access to fresh water from the Florida aquifer. It's right next to the small grassy courtyard, which could be turned into a small garden.

3. The structure of our fort is incredibly unique - comprised of a material called coquina. "The Castillo is a masonry star fort made of a stone called coquina (Spanish for "small shells"), made of ancient shells that have bonded together to form a type of stone similar to limestone."

"Given its light and porous nature, coquina would seem to be a poor choice of building material for a fort. However the Spanish had few other options; it was the only stone available on the northeast coast of La Florida. However, coquina's porosity turned out to have an unexpected benefit. Because of its conglomerate mixture coquina contains millions of microscopic air pockets making it compressible.

A cannon ball fired at more solid material, such as granite or brick would shatter the wall into flying shards, but cannon balls fired at the walls of the Castillo burrowed their way into the rock and stuck there, much like a bb would if fired into Styrofoam. So the thick coquina walls absorbed or deflected projectiles rather than yielding to them, providing a surprisingly long-lived fortress."

You can even see this in action when you visit the fort, specifically the side that faces Matanzas Bay and, thus, was subject to cannon fire. There are a few holes here and there where the walls absorbed normal cannonballs and grapeshot cannonballs and was fine other than having a new dent. So, I'm not too worried about an enemy group with guns. Possibly not even worried about a tank either. As far as guns of our own, there are two National Guard armories nearby... one literally being just on the other side of historic downtown from the fort.

4. This would be Castillo de San Marcos's biggest flaw: from all the tours I have taken there both as a kid and an adult, I know of no passage out other than the main portcullis with a wooden bridge over the dry moat. It's very much defend or die there. Of note, though, that fort has never fallen in battle - it's changed hands peacefully a lot between the Spanish, the British, the Confederate States, and the U.S., but that's also the story of Florida in general. The other concern would be that it's a bit in a bowl. The surrounding grounds taper down towards the fort, so unless you stay on good zombie clean-up duty, you're gonna get them naturally piling up in the dry moat. However, the top of the fort does provide an excellent view of the surrounding area and the bastions are natural sniper points - those little towers are rather claustrophobic, but they've got one little slit to point your rifle out of and snipe while the rest of you is completely surrounded by coquina walls. It's gonna be hard to thread the needle and take one of our snipers out.



The fort's done a great job of protecting people in the past, too. She's never fallen in battle, although the actual city of St. Augustine was burned to the ground several times (wooden structures and all that). However, every time attack was imminent, the townspeople knew to run to the fort and though it seems rather small, it was able to hold all the townspeople safely inside so the soldiers could defend them. Yeah, your house would get burned down, but you lived to rebuild it.

She's got good karma going on there.

 

And you have cannons.
I loved visiting the fort. This building also withstood many hurricanes.

Just a 4 hour drive for me.

 

Definitely better than the prison, although I'd argue that it seems like Alexandria might have more room for folks. Because that'd be my only real complaint about our fort... she's small. I mean, she looks big in the photos, but I've walked her many, many times. There's ample room for people to live inside the walls, sure, but it'd be cramped. It was built back in the 1500's when people were much shorter overall. And when I say that grass in the center courtyard could be turned into a small garden... I do mean a small garden.

But it'd be very secure and have close proximity to good supply run areas. My ultimate goal, going for the long view, would be having everyone holed up in the fort at first, but eventually retaking historic downtown. Once you cleared it of walkers and any other riff-raff, we could start erecting the old city walls again... hell, parts of it are still around as historical markers. Wall off downtown so it was just the old, original city of St. Augustine again, have the fort as defense on the north end and make the National Guard Armory the defense of the south end, and you're golden. We'd only have to wall off the north, west, and south ends... Matanzas Bay would serve as a natural wall on the east side. Only insecure part of that would be sealing off the Bridge of Lions and that's very small... a few cars would block it off.

Once downtown was secured, people could spread out and live in all the old historic homes, bed and breakfasts, and hotels in downtown. We're just rewinding the clock back to good 'ol 1565, no biggie! :zombies_lol:

But, alas, no gunpowder and most of the cannonballs are glued down for show/decoration. However, attacking groups need not know that, so the mere sight of the cannons could be a really good bluffing point!

And that she has in regards to storms. The nice part about our area of Florida, though maybe a more recent phenomenon, is that we don't often suffer a direct strike from hurricanes like the south and panhandle do. We dip inland enough that most of them come up close enough to kiss, get picked up by the gulf stream, and smash the poor Carolinas instead.

 

The gun powder would be the easy part, but finding the right cannon balls would take some doing. A Eugene type would be needed.
And as for the hurricanes. 04 is still in our minds. My folks lost their home. On the plus side. The insurance paid for it to be gutted and replaced.

 

'04 was brutal, but northeast Florida came out okay, like we almost always do. But it was bad. I was in my sophomore year of college when all that went down and I very much remember traveling down to Longwood to help a friend's grandfather whose house lost the roof and also traveled down to Punta Gorda to help another friend who's mother's place got blasted pretty bad. That was a shit year, no doubt. I always get a bit of a survivor's guilt thing about that because it always feels like every other part of Florida suffers, but our happy asses skate by. :/ Not that I really want my house decimated by a hurricane, just that I always feel like the lucky son-of-a-bitch who has to watch her friends go through that shit all the time.

Sorry about your folks' house, but good to hear the insurance company actually manned up and did what they're supposed to do.

 

Without a steady supply of fresh water and historic croplands, then everything with a wall can be a tomb-in-waiting. Florida is an interesting choice because there are long growing seasons and ample farmlands. With a population slashed into the dozens or hundreds, the very limited water tables would probably be fine. But so would mosquitoes and Obamacare might not be taking new applicants.

Hurricanes aren't such an issue once the structures are built to handle those. The Caribb has a thousand years of that evidence. So does the Pacific. Those, at least, come at predictable time periods, too.

I was thinking of an ocean current's tidal forces as being a great cleanser for drawing zombies - by sound - out into those tides. I was thinking "northern Gulf Coast of Florida" but those tides aren't as powerful or as consistent as those on the Jacksonville (East Coast) side. Daytona, etc. Plus fresh-water is far more abundant on the eastern half of the Fla peninsula.

Assuming Florida's freshwater large, reptilian predators and other scavengers don't become zombie-fied themselves, living in those wetlands might be a pretty safe location for the wise inhabitant.

 

This is the place I'd fight tooth and nail to secure and live as a Member for life!

 

I would avoid any supermarket / big box store like the plague. Not even for the obvious reasons of looters or 1,000 other people who have the same idea you do. Lets say hypothetically you get to a store that hasn't been touched.... One in a rural area thats already been nerve gassed or something.... What are you going to do when spoilage sets in? Imagine a Walmart or Costco - with all that frozen food, meat, seafood, produce, and poultry spoiled. With all the flower and cereal and stuff crawling with maggots and weevils... All the rats and mice who come to dine now that the exterminator no longer treats the store. Supermarkets in the wake of Katrina became full fledged hazmat cleanups by guys wearing encapsulated suits and SCBA.

 

I believe that. They used silverware in the Pirates movie

 

It was the first one. I remember the guy with the wooden eye and a fork.
I've seen them all, but 1 was the best.

And that fort in St Augustine is awesome. It would make a great safe place, for about a dozen people