Longshot

"just out of interest, i take it you practice sword fighting? (this is no way intended to come across as i am having a go, i am just interested if you do)" Not really, not in the same sense as Ian does wherby I'm following a specific art form of it at least, though i have recently begun doing some training in Eurpoean medieval style weapons (primarily spear, kite shield and axe based stuff - though this is generally fighting in formation and shield wall rather than one on one). My structured experience is all in unarmed stuff. I've been an MMA instructor for about 11 years now, but spent time as a British Combat Association instructor back in the day when RBSD was all the big thing there for a while, so I've done some weapon based training through that. My interest in weapons is primarily collecting, reading about and playing with them, and I've amassed a ridiculous amount of them over the years! The difference, to a degree, is that I keep a pell to use in my back garden and did (before my son came along) have a pole with a big spike sticking out of it for attaching things to and practising cuts on or destruction testing weapons on. From my experiene I would say the problem with saying "anyone can use a sword" is that it is as true as saying "anyone can throw a punch;" it is true, but anyone who actually knows about throwing punches will tell you there's a lot more to doing it than simply throwing your arm out with your fist clenched, it takes timing technique and (particularly in a high adrenaline situation) the sort of muscle memory that only comes from a lot of training. Despite my limited explerience with swords, I'd have to say that they must be regarded in the same way; it's more than just swinging the lump of metal. When I've done cutting tests with swords (and I'm talking about cheap stuff as well as using my good expensive katanas and my Albion made European swords) I've found that I'm not all that bad and killing fruit, veg and lumps of meat - as long as they stay perfectly still and I can line them up nice and slow and really concentrate on a good cut. But would I feel confident in a 'sword fight' as a result? No! I'd start swinging like a mad man and probably hit with the flat of the blade more often than not (I end up doing that even on the fruit!), and I know I'd get tired fast. That said, I'd still rather have the sword than not when faced with zombies! Lastly, I have nothing against the idea of trapping things in a doorway - it's not a bad strategy at all - I just don't think that a katana is the right tool for the job since (unless you were good enough to drop it in one solid cut) you'd have to be significantly far away from the door to swing the sword at anything coming through several times (and the thing would have to be through the doorway before you could hit it with any meaningful downward strokes) so I just don't believe it would fall into the door as you would hope. Personally, if I wasn't going to have to drag it around with me afterwards, I'd take a large shield in that scenario, something like a Roman scutum, stand in the doorway with my body behind it allowing the undead to build up, and then take a short/medium length, relatively light straight-bladed weapon like a Roman gladius, and stab away at any heads you see. That would guarantee your protection behind the shield, the pile of bodies blocking the door (as you're now actually killing them in the doorway itself) and eliminiate any danger of hitting walls, ceilings and doorframes that you're inevitably going to face with any weapon that requires a swinging motion.

I wouldn't say I was being 'obtuse' - I understand perfectly well what people were describing they think they could do - but I'll certainly admit to being very picky; and I do like to win arguments! The problem with this whole scenario for me is two-fold. Firstly, zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain are magical and have no scientific basis whastoever. As a result the whole scenario requires us to magic up our own definition of the zombies' capabailities. If we rule out 'fast moving zombies' (I'm not going to say '28 Days Later zombies' since there are no zombies in that film) then we're left with 'shamblers.' Personally I imagine these things would still have the ability to raise their arms in defence and swing at you aggresively, even though they may move slowly. I also imagine that since their limbs, muscles and bone are magically holding them together and still moving them that they would also be relatively strong if they got their hands on you. Most people on here, however, are imagining their zombies as moving as slowly as possible, with no head movement at all and having bone and muscle that is paper thin and therefore requires little to no strength to cut through or pierce. I have no idea how such a thing could still move or stand, but since it is a magic thing I'll happily concede that, in this case, any idiot could stand there with a £150 piece of moulded metal that has an edge on it (and a laser etched hamon for good effect) that they want to call a katana and could, given the fact that they have pretty much unlimited time to kill the zombie (as it now seems to pose no significant threat) simply hack or stab it up and then drag its corpse to wherever they wanted it. Secondly, and what actually annoys me more, is that people have no experience of fighting in the style they claim they would employ yet think they could do it because someone in a work of fiction did so. Why is nobody saying "I'd stand 10 foot from the doorway just throwing throwing knives into the eye sockets of any zombie that came through!"? The answer, I imagine, is because people (probably having attempted to actually throw something sharp at a board at some point and realising it's not actually as easy to do as it looks in the movies) accept that they couldn't do it with any reasonable level of power or skill unless they had practiced it for a very long time. Yet when it comes to swords in particular everyone decides that they could easily use it the way they do in the movies, with no practce whatsoever, despite the fact that they have never actually tried to cut anything with their swords. Indeed if they had ever taken a sword to anything that remotely resembles a human limb they would realise that it is not easy to cut apart in a single stroke at all (though again, I'll happily concede that when fighting a paper thin zombie this of not going to be such a big issue). Furthermore and finally (finally! ) if there was a horde of zombies to deal with you'd have to be cutting over and over again and also probably doing so in a situation of high stress. It's at this point that people with no experience of fighting whatsoever realise that continous combat is very tiring and requires trained muscles - especially if it's combat that involves wielding a big lump of steel! Moreover, adrenaline is a great thing if you are used to dealing with it, but will mess you up completely if you're not (as most people who don't train any fighting style at all or train incorrectly often find, to their detriment, when they end up in any real confrontation).

Let's break this down: "So you're telling me that an ultra sharp sword isn't capable of cutting through rotting flesh (or anything else apparently) unless the person holding it has been trained? It's a slashing weapon... Yeah, and what? Last time I looked they have pointy ends. Next you'll be telling me I need training to stab someone with a screw driver." No, I'm telling you (for about the 10th time) that the katana is a weapon that cannot be utilised the way it should be - as a slashing and cutting weapon - since you chose to stand in a doorway with it! Then I'm telling you that if you want a stabbing weapon you'd actually be better off with the screwdriver since it is light, straight and only about 6 inches long, and is therefore easier to put where you want it to go, as well as being easy to retract quickly. A katana on the other hand is far heavier, curved and about two foot long, meaning that you are highly unlikely to put it where you want it to go with any degree of accuracy or force (when you bear in mind that you target here is a brain which will present itself as a target of about four inches wide and three inches high from the front) and also meaning that it is far likely that you're not going to get it back again the first time you screw up and embed it somewhere in the zombie's jaw. "Care to let me attack you with a sword whilst you amble towards me at 2mph? I'm fairly sure you'll realise it's not going to go well for you, even if I was a 2 year old, short sighted toddler." At 2mph a zombie would be over the 6 inch threshold of your doorway in under a second. This means that you have basically one chance to stab it (since we've established that only an idiot would try slashing through a doorframe) through the skull and into the brain forcefully enough to stop it completely. As also already established, that's probably just not going to happen. Moreover, even if you weren't so badly positioned in a dooorway I still doubt that you'd be anywhere near being effective at stopping this zombie because, as has been bought out here by several people who know more than you on the topic, doing it with any degree of effectivess requires skill. You would have to litterally cut the thing's head in half or off to stop it. This requires cutting through both flesh and bone, and your katana can be as 'ultra sharp' as you like but unless you land it exactly on the point of the sharp edge with the weight of the blade following correctly behind it (something which does require skill and training) you're most likely just going to find that you just keep smacking chunks out of the zombie's arms (at least until the blade dulls, as it will after the first few times it hits any bone) and that the zombie just keeps coming. The best you could hope to achieve would be just to smash its head in through repeated heavy blows with your piece of metal, and, again, there are far better bits of metal for that job than a katana. None of which work all that well in a doorway. "I'm fully aware that to use it properly takes skill and training, but hacking shit up sloppily is insanely freakin' easy and zombies are hardly elite warriors from Feudal Japan." Except (for the 11th time), you won't be hacking anything up in a doorway. "Unless I missed that movie?" I've already told you that they've never made a movie where anyone hacks anything up with a katana in a doorway; that's how stupid an idea it is. Even Jason Statham turned it down. "Also, unless you're autistic and have to take things literally by definition of your condition, I think it's fairly obvious that I mean for them to be killed ahead of the door, so they fall into it on the floor and pile there." So now you're not killing them in a doorway, you're just bascially stood outside a building? You're also still using your katana I assume, which is a weapon that is going to need about four foot of space minimum to wield effectively. So now you're four foot away from a doorway, the zombies attacking you can easily surround you and (here comes that magic again) the ones you kill are now apparently not just falling down four foot from the door (as the laws of physics suggest they would) but actually helping you out by taking themselves over to the doorway and lying down atop one another (moving a little bit to let you pass when you're ready to head inside I assume?). And if, at this point, you're thinking: "yeah but I'd be walking backward while I killed them so that would create a pile up as I moved through the doorway!" No (for the 12th time) as you walked backward you would once again find that you are in a doorway and so can longer wield the katana. FINAL RECAP OF YOUR PLAN: 1, Stand four foot from a doorway. 2, Hack wildly at approaching lead zombie. 3, Have trouble getting its head because of its outstreched arms which aren't flying off like they do in the movies because you have no skill with your katana, which is also now basically blunt. 4, Hack even more wildy as you realise other zombies are now surrounding you. 5, Luckily smash the first zombie's head and then look confused as it falls sideways, nowhere near the doorway and leads to no sort of 'pile up.' 6, Retreat back toward doorway. 7, Swing at next zombie. 8, Wonder where sword has gone and realise it is now stuck in the doorframe. 9, Piss pants. 10, Run through doorway and manage to actually retrieve sword as you go. 11, Try to stab zombie. 12, Miss. 13, Try to stab zombie. 14, Miss. 15, Try to stab zombie and manage to drive the sword through its cheek where sword becomes lodged. 16, Shit pants. 17, Run away (provided you have entered somewhere with another exit). 18, Find new pants.

This all just further compounds my earlier point about people who own swords (read: shaped pieces of metal, because as Tariq points out they are not the same thing) thinking they know how to use them when they clearly don't. You think you would "stand in a doorway with a katana," a katana being a sword which is primarily designed as a slashing weapon and which requires long slashing motions (and therefore space) to be effective, and even then requires a hell of a lot skill to (a) angle the blade correctly and strike with the right technique to achieve the cut and ( not just end up with the blade lodged into your opponent (who in this scenario would then just see you as some some of treat on the end of a long metal stick and eat you). Have you ever tried to actually complete any kind of cutting exercise on a solid target with one of these swords? Or will this skill set just materialise magically? Moreover, since most of that skill set comes from watching movies, have you ever seen any movie where anyone 'stands in a doorway' whilst effectively wielding a katana? Even Hollywood suspends the suspension of disbelief when an idea is that bad. And what kind of magical doorway is this anyway? Surely after you somehow completed the amazing space-defying cut that fells the first zombie it would just collapse into the room, rather than somehow floating all over the place and blocking anything at all. At best it would cause a lump on the floor that the next one would just walk across. Moreover its fall would likely just further push you into the room, thus defeating the whole object anyway and possibly trapping you in the room, and all of this is if it didn't just yank the sword from your grip as it fell. I'm sorry for the rant, but If you need training to see how the 'tactics' you've described in utilising such a sword in that way to aid you aren't ridiculous then you'd have to have been immensely dense beforehand.

I love how when these topics come up everyone owns a sword and, having swung it around in their house, assumes they know how to use it. Using any sword, especially those requiring very specialised technique like a katana, is not easy.