[labine50]

I've heard some very good arguments for keeping internal doors in place rather than using them for barricades, but I have to ask- Should they be left open, or closed?

If ~20 zombies were to break into your front door, it would be helpful to have doors open so you can get through the house and evade them faster, yet closed doors would slow them down if they broke through a back or side entrance...

Thoughts?

[Wookiejuice]

I would have to go with having the doors closed. My thinking is that if one does need to move swiftly through the house, you still can with the doors being closed. Yes, it will take another second or two to open it, but at least having the doors closed will slow the undead down. You could even barricade them faster with the doors being closed in the first place, as it should take some time for them to break through, giving you a chance to get some barricadin' material.

Now of course, this is keeping in mind that the undead you're dealing with aren't the new age zombies, who will run full tilt after you, a la Dawn of the Dead remake. In that case, I'd leave the doors open. But geez, stuck in a house with new age zombies? Not my ideal situation. Get the hell outta' there!!!

[zombiephile]

Hmmm...that's a pretty good question, now that I think about it. I think that the answer - both. Any house, no matter the size, should have two methods of egress - this is rational even if you're not planning for a zombie attack (which you probably are).

So, what I would do is leave some doors open and some closed, in order to "funnel" the zombies in into the appropriate rooms of the house. For example, if you have an adjourning bathroom with two doors that touches on two rooms, you could herd the zombies into the bathroom, shut the door behind you, and then run around and shut the other door, trapping them inside (temporarily).

Things like that. I'd say you'd want to plan ahead and make sure that you're in an apartment that this can be done with - if not, you'll want to plan someplace else to crash when the zombies start arriving!