Combing Hilltop and ASZ sounds good. ASZ has stronger wall structure but its food source seems limited while Hilltop has a larger field. It is hard to say which location is better. And Oceanside might be kept as a 'fall back' site. Its location is not as 'exposed/revealed' and it has a unique source of food (ie seafood from the sea).

 

At first I thought this was a general question, and my answer was: The more groups you are in alliance with, the fewer enemy groups there are. Joining forces is the way to go. (Just Say No to lunatic cults.)

Regarding these three groups, I think maintaining each community for its unique benefits and welcoming each other to change their main hangout whenever they want to would foster love and friendship and strengthen the alliance. People on councils should visit the other communities at least annually to learn from each other and maintain a feel for how to help each other. Visits keep the communities from growing apart.

The Kingdom has become a seasonal location, but it is still good agricultural land and should be worked in the planting season. Some people like to be in the thick of things (Alexandria) and some people would prefer a quieter place such as Kingdom or Oceanside. Options are good. Having several viable communities makes it possible for everyone to have a fallback location when something goes wrong, as it did for Kingdom.

 

Would it be possible to combine into one community with the number of people involved? I'm unclear as to the populations of each community.
I definitely think they should be connected, rather than isolated.
Hilltop appears to have the most fields for growing food. Oceanside would always have fish to trade.
Maybe each could specialize in certain necessities that they trade between the communities?

 

I've already said it, but now they have an MPP they should combine further into a single colony with each location as a colony outpost.
First order of business would be to make a flag. Not only would that build camaraderie between each community. A simple four square flag (one square for each community insignia) for example a tree on a hill for hilltop, a crown and tiger for the kingdom, a trident for Oceanside and a sheriff star for Alexandria. This would also show potential attackers that each community may not be alone.
Military/militia training and service should be a community requirement with a proper assembly of ranks. If physically unable to serve as an active militiaman (or woman) then basic combat training should be given and the rest of their military duty should be served helping build or produce for the communities.
They could still remain as individual communities, just change the MPP into a pact of allegiance to eachother and then draft up documents regarding things like trade and taxation.
They could even create a common currency and an write up exchange rates for said currency. Those wooden hilltop discs would have made for good (but over complicated) currency. Currency could be as simple as a signed and stamped (by a community leader/council member) "promise to pay" note and a denomination. Even simpler would be to get old world paper money and have each note signed and stamped by each community leader and a community insignia.


They had five years, five years of having that book which was given to themand they only started charters now and let things break or simply fall apart. Almost like it's for plot reasons or something.

 

Michonne started that charter when Rick was there.

 

Fair enough, didn't know that.
She took five years to sign the damn thing though.
I mean, she had her reasons, but the other communities were always trustworthy, they are stronger together.
I guess it takes a main character to die before pen is put to paper lol.

They could have had a militia by now. They could have sent five man scouting parties out to hardware stores, factories, oil refineries, coal mines, fossil fuel power plants (they always have surplus nearby and coal/oil are easy enough to transport) and abandoned military bases (a hmmvw will run on everything from ethanol to vegetable oil) there is a bunch of valuable stuff out there just waiting to be taken and 5-10 well trained men or women could move over land, map the terrain and set up for supply recovery.
I've never been to the US though your standard (chain) hardware store is about 3-5x the size of the ones here from what I've seen in videos selling almost everything useful.
A truckload of deep cycle lead-acid batteries and battery acid would have been a good grab five years ago. If the battery electrodes fail all that needs to be done is open the battery up (carefully) and depending on the state of the electrodes you could either scrape them clean; or melt the lead down, scrape the crap off the molten lead and mould new electrodes.
A compressor (an older belt driven one, so you could hook it up to a bike) would be a helpful grab too.
As would a couple of welding machines (stick wouldn't require argon/CO2, but MIG is easier)
And an old stationary steam engine would be useful to either grab up, or make from scratch, you could hook it up to a generator and have wood, coal or even dried goat poop powered electricity. Human waste could even be stored in underground cisterns to produce methane for heating, power and even cooking (yeah I know; poop gas. Though I ate flatbread cooked over goat crap in Egypt. Tasted fine) they have Eugene (who should be teaching) and there have got to be libraries around their area; are public libraries uncommon in the US? There's one 5 minutes from me (on foot) and I live at the end of the suburbs, there are fields five minutes in the other direction; so books one way, a field full of rabbits in the other.
Nicest thing about that field is the rabbit's live on disputed public land and feed on the farmer's land, meaning if someone were, say; to poach a few (using legal snares, or a slingshot) provided the snares are set right on the property barrier it would be very hard to prosecute for poaching.
If the poacher is prosecuted for poaching of public land it will lessen the farmer's land claim. If the poacher is prosecuted by the farmer then the state will try to say it wasn't off his land and it is their matter to deal with.
Of course when I go walking there I make sure to keep the area tidy, the farmer who owns the field is actually a pretty nice guy, letting us drink and camp out there when we were kids so I tend to pick up and bag bottles and other trash left there and have picked up half buried barbed wire on one occasion and.carried it up to the outhouse, if someone had been injured by it (there are a fair amount of people walking up there who use the field as a the scenic route) they might sue, so I've always tried to help out up there and not be a nuisance.

Not that I would be doing anything other than going for a nice walk there. ;D

 

You are our Eugene.

 

@Lindigo
Considering I have super long hair for a guy I could always turn it into a mullet lol. Though if the world was to go to shit, walkers or otherwise all hair must go. Too easy to grab on to.
If Eugene got given some combat training he would be a force to be reckoned with. He seems to be entirely goal driven, is fairly knowledgeable and seems to want to learn more.
On the downside he can be a bit quite egotistical. That said if there was a militia set up he would make an excellent combat engineer, however he seems to need good leadership or he winds up playing videogames all day.
His character has great potential (but he hasn't grown over 5 years, though only the main characters seem to have radically changed) though; I hope he gets kept on for another few seasons.

 

@WillyJakkz
Stop saying my ideas are good, it'll all go to my head. Lol.

On a more serious note, having scouting groups form a buddy system where one person stays awake while the rest sleeps would stop them dying in their sleep. I mean we could go down the route of procuring early gen smartwatches/fitbits and changing the firmware to make it beep loudly when no pulse is detected would alert people to the recently dead, but due to the year the world ended (around 2010 IIRC) the only wearable fitness trackers would be prototypes and thus hard to get, especially to give one to every community member. They've only become a thing in the past 4-5 years so they would be extremely hard to source.
The simplest solution would be to have everyone (in a safe zone) tie an arm to part of their hut/bed and have scouts who can' be tied for obvious reasons wear a bell/s so if they get up there's a ringing sound. Or, if they can find a surplus of Christmas crackers, have them the their ankle to one of the cardboard cracker pieces (the internal part of a Christmas cracker, if you.had an.experienced chemist they could make these "Walker alarms" easily.enough from touch explosives in.very small.quantities set up like the cracking part of a Christmas cracker) and the the other end to 3/4 cordage and then to a stake by their bedding. Meaning there would be a loud bang if they moved.
Obviously this would be an issue for people who suffer from somambulance (sleepwalking) but a tie to their bedframe and a bell should sort that.

For expanding their zone they could set up chokepoonts and checkpoints. Each barracks of people should have a maximum of 4 to a room and the rooms could be locked at night.
Lines leading to alarm bells each set up in a central control room (which is always manned) could also be set up inside and just outside of every dorm just in case of an outbreak, that way an outpost commander knows where to set up barricades and send fighters in case of a serious outbreak.

With proper control and nightly walker patrols inside the control zone the risk would be low.

To proof the area from human invaders and whisperers pits, deadfall traps and punji spikes could be set up at intervals. Warning signs could be placed near the sets of traps and scouts could observe walker movement. If they appear to move away from real signs (and decoy signs) then a Molotov cocktail can be tossed into the centre of the herd. It's human nature to back away from fireballs so humans would be easy to find in the midst of a herd and if set alight, they would distract the walkers too.

It would.be difficult but if a 3 layer system was set up around each major population hub then if the outer layer was breached the people could fall back one layer, to a smaller and more heavily defended pocket, if that were breached then more survivors would occupy the innermost layer, fending off almost every attack.

Radio transmitters for group leaders broadcasting on a commonly used frequency (so normal, one way radios could all tune in) would allow passage of info to everyone.

 

Combining makes the most logical sense but emotionally we still don’t know if the communities want to combine. I know Maggie and Michonne had beef but we dont know how widespread that was. Taras last order was to cooperate so lets see if the new leader agrees.


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I’m always unclear of how far apart the communities are. I feel like they waste resources traveling and it puts the people in each community at risk. Combining would have its benefits with the large numbers they have, but I feel as though each community has its own set of strengths and advantages. I saw someone mentioned using the other locations as outposts, which could work if done properly. As far as people having issues with one another (like Michonne and Maggie), I feel like the only way they can be at their strongest is to start fresh. They know each other is a good person at heart. They went through the worst of the worst with each other. It’s time to put any lingering differences to the side, make amends and grow together. That all being said, I think the distance between the communities would have to be clear for me to make a decision on this because I feel like they need each other and should be close to be at peak strength against any threat that comes their way.

 

But this would put them under single leadership. Maybe rule changes. Not as easy as it initially sounds.


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Yes he has! He fights now!

 

I was sure someone was going to be confused by using "Christmas crackers" for alarms, but apparently you all also know them from Downton Abbey.

I went to fetch an image that would show what cool things you can get inside of Christmas crackers after they pop and saw that these Downton Abbey ones were on sale for 1 cent. lol So I tried to order one and the order form said they don't ship west. Shoot. lol

https://www.worldmarket.com/product/large downton abbey crackers, 6-count.do

 

Well, I learned something new. I figured Christmas crackers were popular all over the (English speaking) world. Had no idea they didn't have them in the US, or at the least, they weren't anywhere near as popular.
I suppose making the strips inside them (two strips of card with joined at the middle by a paper wrapping containing (a very, very small amount) of some sort of touch explosive and each piece of card is slightly abrasive, like sandpaper, in the middle at the join, so it produces a loud(ish) bang when the pieces separate) would be too difficult, so there foes that idea.

A simple stand in would be to have percussion cap (percussion primer caps for firearms) systems set up where a percussion cap is mounted on a (blunt) spike and a small "hammer" is propelled towards it when disturbed. I could see these being easily made from mousetraps. Hammer a tack in where the kill bar comes down, slightly widen the kill bar to ensure a clean strike on the cap and then, put a.percussion cap on the tack and set the mouse trap up with a string trigger tied to someone sleeping if they're injured, ill or have a heart condition, etc. When the string is pulled (e.g by someone sleeping standing up) the kill bar will whack the cap and produce a loud bang. Even a loud rat trap without any modifications and a string trigger would be good enough in a barracks/dorm where multiple people sleep, the loud snap would definitely wake someone up.
Commercial devices like this also exist which use a blank shotgun shell and a tripwire to warn people of intruders on property. Speaking of shot shells, I'm surprised shot shell landmines have never been used. All you need is a shot shell, a nail and a (thin) piece of wood. You did a hole, place the nail in the ground point up then place the shot shell on top of it and top it off with a small and thin wooden pressure plate which is then disguised with foliage. Not lethal, but it'll take a few toes off someone unlucky enough to step in one. Adding more shot shells (in groups of two or more) will increase the damage done. Very illegal today (it won't differentiate between a kid going to get a lost ball or a home invader) but super useful to put around areas if you want to demoralize a group of attackers.

Other ways to make a loud bang would be to have a balloon tied to someone and a way of popping that balloon if significantly disturbed. Such as running th string through a short piece of plastic pipe with screws through it, so pulling hard on the string drags the balloon straight into pointy screws, nails, thumb tacks, broken glass, etc.

I'm not sure how popular the personal distress alarms aka "rape alarms" are in the US (you do have plenty of firearms, pepper spray and tasers) which are a better deterrent than a loud siren with a string attached to a plastic "pin" that is pulled out, though again attaching these to an ankle then to a piece of bedding would work. They are battery powered and batteries do expire (eventually, usually 5+ years after their listed date) but they should still work even 10 years after the start of the walker pandemic. Somewhere would more than likely have a large stock of them. The noise may however attract walkers if set off accidentally.

Measures like these, as would greatly decrease the chance of someone who dies in the night going unnoticed. Having an infirmary where each patient can be watched overnight (if a community gets larger) as well as having an ankle restraint put on them would be excellent.

It's a bit of a pity they never expanded after 5 years. The only thing that's grown is Judith (and Negan, to an extent) but not the communities; if anything they've regressed. I would have expected 19th century tech to be widely used along with modern technology.
Looters may have stolen essebtials from places but when community building most building, construction supplies would be left as would heavier, less useful things like solar panels and heaps of deep cycle lead acid batteries.

 

They can't combine communities since Oceanside has to fish, Hilltop has to farm, Kingdom has to raise pigs etc...they are pinned to their locales. If they make those outposts then very easy to be overwhelmed by enemies.

If they were to combine and share then I go back to my previous idea of moving into Washington DC, settled into the Mall, each community take up one or two museums, and use the center mall lawn to farm, and the shallow reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial for Oceanside to fish . Hold inter-community meetings at the capitol.

I would put walkers to work. Chain them up and let them walk in circles to push merry go rounds and turn that into energy.

I would chop off thousands and thousands of walker heads put each on a pike surrounding the entire mall perimeter so fresh walkers wouldn't bother to breach thinking its all walkers inside.