Your octopus information had me HOWLING with laughter. Especially "one breed is immune to the sting of a certain jellyfish, so they pull off a tentacle and whack other fish with it." My God, they are smart!

I read a news story years ago about an aquarium worker who particularly adored the octopuses. (Had to check. Yep, I was a sucker for the Latin plural. USAGE The standard English plural of octopus is octopuses. However, the word octopus comes from Greek, and the Greek plural form is octopodes. Modern usage of octopodes is so infrequent that many people mistakenly create the erroneous plural form octopi, formed according to rules for Latin plurals.) He went on vacation for two weeks. When he came back, the octopuses swarmed all over him with octopus hugs. That bond of friendship was mutual.

I so agree about how supplies should be absolutely everywhere in the post apocalypse world. And I agree about stress free(er) life on the water. We were supposed to be cured of thinking that was a good idea in FTWD, but I still think that's the way to go.

I don't know how I missed this post initially, but I'm glad I found it now.

 

Life on the water would be good. If I were in that situation I would head for an oil rig with a bunch of canned food, weapons and survival gear. An oil rig would be cushy and you could always head back to the mainland (in a chopper; I've always wanted to fly a helicopter. I've learned the basics in flight sims and by flying RC helicopters; the bigger a chopper gets, the easier it is to control too and unlike a plane, if there is an engine failure they don't just drop like a stone, the rotors go into autorotation and the helicopter can land safely, like a sycamore (sp?) leaf. IIRC the highest altitude autorotation landing (with the engine cut) was performed from 10,000 feet (as a stunt, not an emergency landing) and the helicopter landed on target, undamaged so in ways they are safer than planes; if you know how to fly one, more useful too as provided you can find an area to land about 2x as wide as the rotors you can land and take off with ease. I remember an army helicopter was at my school for something the kids a few years ahead of us got to be passengers on it for (school won a prize in aerodynamics IIRC) but we got to get on board while it was on the ground.
I would love to get a heli pilot's licence, though they are crazy expensive. A paramotor seems to be the aircraft to learn to fly, with a licence costing about £1500 to obtain and the paramotor about £5000-15,000, compared to a single Cessna at £90k, though you could obviously do more with the Cessna, a paramotor would be excellent for going from A to B in a SHTF situation, aerial reconnaissance and even attacking from air by using something like an SMG in your (semi) free hand. Unfortunately they are (mostly) a one man flying machine, though the compact nature of them would make it really useful for going 10-20 miles in 10-20 minutes.

Anyway, on the topic of oil rigs, there are plenty that run with skeleton crews or are outright abandoned and if you were able to sail up to one on a boat with things that people need (cigarettes and alcohol being major commodities, as well as seeds for easy to grow vegetables. If the boat was big enough a few chickens and a rooster or even a couple of sheep and a ram would be indispensable) you could likely get a bunk on an oil rig. After that all you would have to do is set up roof gardens and if you have livestock, feed them scraps. You could always add floating pontoons and make a small water based society by doing mainland runs and getting livestock aboard and then just wait out the apocalypse in comfort eating eggs, fish, goats cheese and the odd hen or goat whilst every one else runs from zombies. If the oil the well is active and you happen to know an oil refinery that is still manned, can haul barrels of crude oil over for supplies, weapons, etc. An oil rig would be easy enough to defend too, so long as you had people on watch. As for power, you could either use solar, wind or (providing the oil well had some) natural gas. You could even refine your own crude oil on a small scale. Turbine generators would be hard to find, though most oil rigs have a bank of oil powered internal combustion generators, not as efficient as heat to steam, but efficient enough for a nice life and since oil rigs have workers there for months, the oil companies build as many comforts of home on board to keep workers happy so there would be televisions and games consoles in every rec room.
If there was a zombie apocalypse, I would book it for an oil rig. Though this wouldn't make for a good television series, naturally.

 

Wow. You really, really, really are the person to hang out with in an apocalypse.