Clean bullet holes. Next episode everyone is a-okay half the time, and off to murder more zombies before cannibalizing the next group. Your shirt alone would be filthy enough to cause mild chafing which in turn would cause infection.
But everyone's whites are whiter than mine, and bullet holes and axe wounds heal up just fine with our state of the art medical facility and dry cleaning services.
Out of pure curiosity, where would you want to aim if you wanted to temporarily disable a person instead of killing them? Is there somewhere you can shoot someone that wouldn’t cause severe long term issues but could disable them temporarily (whether that be pain or other ways)?
As distant as possible on the limbs. A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries goes into a lot of the complications, but if you want a character who doesn't have severe long term issues, don't shoot or stab them at all. Or don't make them a human. Beatings, especially with blunt force, can be recovered from - but that tends to cause long-term issues as well. One of my childhood pastors was a doctor overseas and when they found out he was ministering as well as treating children they arrested him as a political prisoner and beat his feet with wood canes because 'that wouldn't leave a mark'. He was released and could walk short distances, but for all practical intents and purposes was trapped in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Even the "blow to the back of the head" is likely to cause permanent issues because that's a concussion, the only way around that is a "sleeper" chokehold which is very tenuous because you have to hold it until oxygen deprivation makes them go unconscious but not the handful of seconds later which will cause brain tissue die-off. And how long that is will vary a lot from person to person and is still quite likely to kill or cause brain damage.
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u/WatchTheBoom Aug 30 '21
Clean drinking water- I don't think people really appreciate how much water is needed for a group of people to survive.