MARTIAL ARTS

Everybody was kung-fu fighting. Ha! Hu cha! So says Carl Douglas, and if he is to be believed they were also fast as lightning (ha, hu cha!), but how useful will being a master in the martial arts be during a zombie apocalypse? Well, in some cases, good. In some cases, bad. Isn’t that always the case?

Contrary to popular belief, the term ‘martial arts’ does not just refer to any Eastern form of fighting technique but more specifically to any discipline in the form of combat and hand-to-hand warfare (Mars is the God of War – hence martial arts), including boxing and fencing. So is it handy to have one, or some, or all of the different forms of martial arts in your sll set?

Yes, having the discipline to learn these arts certainly shows that you will have an aptitude for survival and will also, no doubt, have greater physical stamina because of it. But let us not forget how a zombie is destroyed. That’s right, you need to eliminate the brain. So, although hand-to-hand combat may be an asset when attempting to keep an attacking corpse at bay it’s not really going to cut the mustard when it comes to smushing the brain.

Now, I’m sure there are those martial artists out there who assure me that they could crush a zombie’s skull with their bare hands – after all, we’ve seen little Japanese men chop through six-foot blocks of concrete before so I’ve no doubt it’s possible. But please, a brain is squishy and messy. Do you really want to drive your bare hand, with force, into a brain? The mess will go all over the place – and it’s unlikely you’ll have running water to clean up with afterwards.

Besides the mess, it’s not actually very safe either. The brain is in the head which is quite near the mouth, and the last thing you want to do is get bitten. But if you’re waving your hand around near a zombie’s face then that could very well be what happens. Even if your knuckle nicks the old dead boy’s tooth whilst you smack him in the face, that’s still a bite as far as we’re concerned.

So, no matter how much you want to show off, close combat hand-to-hand is not recommended when dealing with zombies. The martial arts you need to utilise are the weapon-based ones: fencing or Gatka, Kendo, Eskrima or Jukendo. The majority of these disciplines focus on the use of bladed weaponry. However, once the discipline is mastered you can use any weapon within the structure of the art – be it golf clubs, baseball bats, standard lamps, small children or chairs. Each will be equally effective as a sword in both offensive and defensive manoeuvres.