Zombie Math

Seems like most of you watched the season premiere of The Walking Dead, One of the questions I keep seeing is How come they don't have any guns? Why don't they just bust into a gun shop?

Ok, let's use Charlotte, NC for our arithmetic example. Let's estimate that, if you total all the guns available in Charlotte gun shops, pawn shops and sporting goods stores, that you end up with a total of 10,000 firearms. Presume that the merchants didn't sell any of them during the zombification crisis, just left them in the stores for survivors (*rolls eyes*)

Charlotte has a population of 731,424 people. If the zombie plague carried off 90% of the population (and good riddance to a lot of them, frankly) that leaves 73,143 people who'd probably like to have a gun or two. Or three. And lots of ammunition, too.

Do the math. A lot of people will be left without guns.

Yeah, you say, but lots of houses have guns in them, probably. They should just go house to house and look for guns.

Yes, that's true, a lot of houses will have guns in them. They'll also have zombies in them, around them, near them. Clearing and securing houses is dangerous enough when you have guns and can shoot at will, but when you're creeping around quietly trying not to draw the attention of the zombies, it becomes a nightmare. Here at the start of season 2, the survivors in Rick's group only have six able-bodied men to do this house-clearing, with only two of them trained in police work such as house-clearing. After three or four houses there will probably be a couple of casualties, men bitten by zombies or accidentally shot/killed by comrades.

Thus the wisdom of being prepared in advance of the disaster. After the disaster is too late.